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HE  OPENED  TO  US 
THE  SCRIPTURES 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NEW  YORE  •  BOSTON  •  CHICAGO  •  DALLAS 
ATLANTA  •  SAN  FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  Limited 

LONDON  •  BOMBAY  •  CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OP  CANADA,  Ltd. 

TORONTO 


HE  OPENED  TO  US 
THE  SCRIPTURES 


A  Study  of  Christ's  Better  Way 
in  the  Use  of  Scripture 


BY  / 

BENJAMIN  W.  BACON 

D.D.,  LITT.D.  (OXON.) 


i®eto  got* 

THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

1923 


All  rights  reserved 


PRINTED  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES  OF  AMERICA 


Copyright,  1923, 

By  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY. 


Set  up  and  printed.  Published  January,  1923. 


Press  of 

J.  J.  Little  &  Ives  Company 
New  York,  U.  S.  A. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  PAGE 

I  Primitive  Ideas  of  Divine  Revelation  .  .  3 

II  How  Christian  Writers  Conceive  of  Their 

Own  Inspiration . 29 

III  Private  Interpretation,  and  Interpreta¬ 

tion  Approvable  by  All . 47 

IV  The  Example  of  Jesus  and  Paul  ...  69 

V  The  Witness  of  the  Spirit . 97 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2019  with  funding  from 
Princeton  Theological  Seminary  Library 


https://archive.org/details/heopenedtousscriOObaco 


CHAPTER  I 

PRIMITIVE  IDEAS  OF  DIVINE  REVELATION 


HE  OPENED  TO  US  THE 
SCRIPTURES 


CHAPTER  I 

PRIMITIVE  IDEAS  OF  DIVINE  REVELATION 

The  Christian  doctrine  of  sacred  Scripture  dif¬ 
fers  widely  from  the  pagan,  and  scarcely  less  widely 
from  that  of  contemporary  Judaism  from  which  it 
sprang.  The  pagan  expresses  his  consciousness  of 
the  more  than  individual  authority  attaching  to  a 
code  of  laws,  such  as  that  of  Hammurabi,  or  Solon, 
or  Lycurgus,  or  that  of  the  Twelve  Tables,  by  de¬ 
claring  them  a  divine  revelation.  Doubtless  the 
codifier  enhances  their  appeal  by  making  the  most 
of  this  representation.  But  we  do  injustice  to  him 
and  to  his  readers  alike  if  we  think  the  representa¬ 
tion  is  a  mere  imposition.  On  the  contrary,  the 
ancient  framer  of  a  code  of  law  is  sincerely  conscious 
that  the  product  of  his  pen  is  not  his  own.  Were 
it  indeed  of  his  own  manufacture,  the  code  would 
have  by  common  consent  but  little  value,  whether 
for  the  compiler  or  for  others.  To  have  any  cogency 
at  all,  it  must  embody  the  mores,  the  consuetudinary 
law,  the  civil  and  religious  usages  of  the  group. 

It  becomes,  thus,  an  expression  of  its  moral  and 

3 


4  HE  OPENED  TO  US  THE  SCRIPTURES 


religious  consciousness,  and,  as  such,  is  regarded  as 
in  some  sense  “divine.”  The  ancient  codes  have 
survived  because  they  were  crowned  with  the  halo 
of  this  divine  authority.  Without  it  they  would 
have  perished,  because  antiquity  has  no  other  means 
of  expressing  authority  of  this  type  save  to  call  it 
divine.  The  nation  feels  itself  to  be  indeed  “taught 
of  God.” 

We  may  state  it,  then,  as  a  general  rule  in  the 
history  of  culture  that  primitive  consuetudinary 
law,  when  it  advances  to  the  stage  of  codification, 
is  also  canonized.  Whether  by  formal  act,  or  by 
gradual  acceptation,  it  becomes  endowed  with  super¬ 
human  attributes  and  authority,  because  it  is  felt 
to  embody  general  rights  and  obligations.  The  Old 
Testament  preserves  no  less  than  four  accounts  of 
the  formal  process  of  canonization  after  codification 
of  the  successive  strata  of  “the  law  of  Moses.” 
Exodus  24:4-8  records  the  canonization  by  an  act 
of  formal  covenant  between  the  people  and  God 
(represented  through  priest  and  altar,  sacrifice  and 
sprinkling  of  blood)  of  the  code  known  to  critics 
as  the  Elohistic  Book  of  the  Covenant  (Ex.  20-23). 
A  similar  scene  is  enacted  with  increased  elabora¬ 
tion  and  solemnity  to  depict  the  promulgation  of 
the  Deuteronomic  Code  (Dt.  27:1-26),  whose  ac¬ 
tual  adoption,  through  another  form  of  popular 
pledge  to  God,  is  described  by  a  nearly  contempor¬ 
ary  historian  in  II  Kings  23:1-3.  Finally,  Ezra’s 
reconstructed  and  enlarged  Book  of  the  Law  of 
Moses  is  validated  and  adopted  by  similar  cere- 


PRIMITIVE  IDEAS  OF  DIVINE  REVELATION  5 


monies  covering  an  entire  week  of  observances  de¬ 
scribed  in  Nehemiah  8:1-6. 

Neither  pagan  nor  Jew  is  limited  to  law  in  his 
conception  of  the  sphere  of  divine  revelation  and  in¬ 
spiration.  Indeed,  to  the  primitive  mind  there  is 
something  awe-inspiring  in  literature  itself,  which 
through  the  medium  of  written  symbols  enshrines 
the  soul  of  the  past.  Primitive  man  values  es¬ 
pecially  the  mystic  utterances  of  soothsayer  and 
seer,  prophet,  priest,  or  shaman,  who  in  terms  of 
magic  or  religion  interprets  to  him  the  reactions  of 
the  mysterious  universe  in  which  he  finds  himself. 
Priest  or  prophet  as  well  as  lawgiver,  if  he  speak 
for  himself  alone,  is  without  authority.  And  he, 
too,  is  far  from  insincere  in  clothing  his  oracular  ut¬ 
terances  with  the  halo  of  divinity.  On  the  con¬ 
trary,  he  invariably  falls  back  upon  a  vast  body  of 
inherited  mythology,  folklore  and  tradition,  in 
which  his  own  belief  is  no  less  intense  (if  perhaps 
somewhat  more  reflective  and  discriminating)  than 
the  superstition  of  the  masses.  That  is  a  very  crude 
type  of  psychology  which  accounts  for  the  belief 
in  the  inspiration  of  oracle  and  seer  by  a  theory  of 
purposed  imposture  on  the  part  of  priests  bent  on 
promoting  their  own  interests  and  authority.  Self- 
seeking  priestcraft  and  false  prophecy  are  not  un¬ 
known;  priests  and  prophets  can  be  found  at  every 
stage  of  human  culture,  who  connive  at  deception  or 
willingly  add  impetus  to  popular  credulity,  know¬ 
ing  its  readiness  to  be  turned  to  any  unworthy  pur¬ 
pose.  But  even  in  the  advance  of  superstition  the 


6  HE  OPENED  TO  US  THE  SCRIPTURES 


leaders  are  rarely  insincere.  They  are  far  more  apt 
to  be  themselves  more  deceived  than  deceiving.  In 
its  lowest  forms,  this  expression  of  mass-psychology 
is  stigmatized  as  “false”  prophecy.  The  greatest 
crimes  with  which  the  name  of  religion  has  been 
stained  have  been  committed  under  the  domination 
of  its  spirit  of  fanaticism  and  credulity.  But  in  its 
higher  manifestations  prophecy  has  lifted  the  spirit 
of  a  people  to  its  noblest  ideals  and  attainments. 
The  “prophet”  truly  worthy  of  the  name  uses  his 
utmost  power  to  discriminate,  from  an  inherited 
mass  of  mingled  truth  and  superstition,  abiding  ele¬ 
ments  of  moral  and  religious  value. 

By  a  divine  overruling,  or  (if  we  choose  to  borrow 
the  terminology  of  the  biologists)  a  survival  of  that 
best  fitted  to  the  social  and  ethical  ideal,  it  is  the 
highest  which  in  the  end  survives.  Prophecy,  like 
law,  when  it  has  reached  the  stage  of  embodiment  in 
literary  form  is  also  canonized.  The  act  or  process 
expresses  popular  appreciation  of  that  more  than 
human  factor  which  enters  into  prophecy,  that 
burning  inspiration  of  the  true  champion  of  right 
which  teaches  him  that  he  is  not  speaking  for  him¬ 
self,  but  is  the  mouthpiece  of  an  eternal  divine  law 
of  righteousness  shaping  the  destinies  of  men  and 
nations.  The  Jewish  people’s  sense  of  this  finds  ex¬ 
pression  in  placing  the  masterpieces  of  written 
prophecy  side  by  side  with  the  codes  of  law  to  form 
a  second  canon.  For  in  Israel  the  prophets  came  to 
be  the  statesmen  of  Jehovah.  Their  writings,  in¬ 
cluding  both  narrative  and  exhortation,  understood 


PRIMITIVE  IDEAS  OF  DIVINE  REVELATION  7 


to  give  interpretation  and  practical  application  to 
the  divine  will  laid  down  in  the  Law.  For  in  Jewish 
application  “prophecy”  includes  the  narrative 
books.  The  prophet  thus  becomes  the  successor  of 
Moses.  In  each  successive  generation  a  prophet  is 
“raised  up”  for  the  leadership  and  direction  of  the 
people  in  the  path  marked  out  for  it  by  its  invisible 
King  (Dt.  18:15-19). 

In  due  time  poetry,  legend,  mythology,  were  re¬ 
duced  to  written  form;  and  these,  too,  so  far  as 
popular  use  found  in  them  expression  of  its  re¬ 
ligious  life,  were  canonized  in  Israel.  That  is,  such 
elements  of  the  mingled  later  literature  as  were 
found  helpful  in  practical  experience  to  the  religious 
life  of  the  people  by  giving  expression  and  impetus 
to  their  moral  and  religious  ideal,  were  admitted 
(not  without  long  dispute)  to  the  list  of  books  of¬ 
ficially  approved  for  public  reading  in  the  synagogue. 
In  the  Judaism  of  New  Testament  times,  whence 
Christianity  derives  its  conception  of  canonicity, 
this  third  group  receives  the  general,  all-inclusive 
title  of  “Writings”  ( Hagiographa ,  as  the  Greek 
translators  render  the  term),  a  group  whose  outer 
limit  remained  in  dispute  well  into  the  second  cen¬ 
tury  after  Christ.  Supporters  of  the  claims  to  ad¬ 
mission  for  this  or  that  book  maintained  that  it 
“defiled  the  hands,”  in  other  words,  should  be 
written  on  parchment,  not  on  papyrus.  For  parch¬ 
ment,  being  the  skin  of  a  dead  body,  made  him  who 
touched  it  ritually  “unclean.”  The  necessity  for 
washing  the  hands  after  touching  the  book  may 


8  HE  OPENED  TO  US  THE  SCRIPTURES 


have  been  a  protection  against  careless  handling, 
but  the  real  origin  of  the  strange  expression  is 
doubtless  the  fact  that  parchment,  being  much  more 
expensive  as  well  as  more  durable  than  papyrus, 
was  in  practice  reserved  for  writings  of  greater  value 
and  importance.  Simple  use  and  wont  had  prob¬ 
ably  most  to  say  in  securing  admission  of  particular 
writings  to  this  third  group  of  the  Jewish  canon. 
Congregations  demanded  what  in  practice  they  had 
become  accustomed  to  hearing,  and  (on  whatever 
interpretation)  had  found  religiously  helpful.  In 
the  debates  of  the  rabbis  reasons  are  found  in  the 
religious  lessons  which  current  interpretation  dis¬ 
covered.  It  was  indeed  this  interpretation  (critical 
or  otherwise),  not  their  original  and  authentic  mean¬ 
ing,  which  gave  them  contemporary  effect,  and 
thus  constituted  their  real  contribution  to  the  re¬ 
ligious  life  of  the  time. 

In  all  this  long  process  of  canonization  we  must 
distinguish  between  the  genuine,  unsophisticated 
instinct  of  the  people  as  a  whole,  conscious  of  the 
moral  uplift  it  receives,  and  particular  theories  ad¬ 
vanced,  whether  among  the  credulous  masses,  or 
their  scarcely  less  credulous  but  more  sophisticated 
religious  leaders,  to  give  account  of,  and  justify,  this 
consciousness.  The  consciousness  is  of  God. 
Through  it  the  eternal  Word  bears  perennial  wit¬ 
ness  to  its  own  authorship.  As  for  the  writers  and 
compilers  of  this  multiform  literature  covering  sev¬ 
eral  languages  and  almost  a  millennium  of  time, 
neither  are  they  so  egotistic,  nor  the  people  so  ir- 


PRIMITIVE  IDEAS  OF  DIVINE  REVELATION  9 


religious,  as  to  take  the  writings  as  no  more  than 
the  individual  output  of  so  and  so  many  individual 
human  brains.  Varied  as  the  collection  is,  it  pos¬ 
sesses  both  a  national  and  a  religious  unity.  As 
an  ancient  writer  expresses  it,  one  dominant  Spirit 
(; 'principalis  spiritus )  pervades  the  whole.  It  is  a 
canon,  a  Bible,  a  people’s  expression  of  its  historic 
spiritual  life  through  selections  from  its  national 
literature.  Even  were  we  then  to  deny  to  individual 
Scripture  writers  any  conscious  codperation  of  the 
eternal  Spirit  of  Truth,  we  should  still  be  compelled 
to  admit  an  element  beyond  themselves  in  this  un¬ 
sought  unity.  The  canonization  of  a  sacred  litera¬ 
ture  makes  it  in  a  real  sense  “God’s  book.” 

Ancient  religious  thought  expresses  its  sense  of 
the  superhuman  factor  in  such  embodiments  of 
national  religious  life  by  some  form  of  consecration 
or  taboo.  Epic  or  Veda,  mystic  Way  or  Book  of  the 
Dead,  oracle  of  priestly  shrine  or  surah  of  the  Koran, 
the  utterance  is  declared  “inspired,”  because  both 
he  who  speaks  and  they  who  hear  subordinate 
(though  in  different  degree)  elements  admittedly 
human,  transient,  individual,  and  fallible  to  that 
which  by  origin  and  destiny  alike  may  well  claim 
immortality.  Preserved  in  written  form,  these  ut¬ 
terances  of  seer,  poet,  prophet,  or  lawgiver  justify 
their  title  to  reverence  as  divinely  “revealed”  and 
“inspired”  just  in  so  far  as  we  limit  our  view  to 
that  which  gives  them  unity.  We  count  them  truly 
such  because  of  their  expression  of  a  religious  and 
moral  consciousness  at  first  national,  ultimately 


10  HE  OPENED  TO  US  THE  SCRIPTURES 


universal ;  and  this  growing  consciousness  can  reason¬ 
ably  be  regarded  by  religious-minded  men  as  due  to 
the  guidance  and  discipline  of  a  higher  Power,  a 
Spirit  that  works  invisibly  through  the  ages,  a 
“Power  not  ourselves  that  makes  for  righteousness.” 
As  Loescher  wisely  said  of  the  slow  determination 
of  the  canon: 

Not  at  a  single  stroke  and  by  human  determina¬ 
tion  was  it  brought  forth,  as  men  declare,  but 
little  by  little,  by  agency  of  God,  the  director  of 
minds  and  of  ages.1 

We  have  seen  that  there  are  elements  of  identity 
in  all  doctrines  of  revelation  and  inspiration;  be¬ 
cause  most  religions,  once  culture  has  reached  the 
literary  stage,  tend  to  produce  a  canon  of  sacred 
Scripture.  The  communal  mind  unloads  its  store 
of  accumulated  tradition,  law,  legend,  belief,  and 
poetry  upon  the  written  page.  Later  generations, 
falling  heir  to  the  treasure,  naturally  invest  it  with 
attributes  expressive  of  a  divine  authority.  For 
records  such  as  these  are  felt  to  be  written  embodi¬ 
ments  of  the  communal  soul-life  and  are  used  to 
promote  it.  In  proportion  as  the  institutions  of 
the  group  come  to  be  built  upon  these  writings  men 
vie  with  one  another  in  ascribing  to  them  super¬ 
human  attributes;  and  ascriptions  of  this  type  will 
always  tend  to  take  a  hyperbolic  form. 

1  Non  uno,  quod  dicunt,  actu  ab  hominibus,  sed  paulatim  a 
Deo,  animorum  temporumque  rectore,  productus.  Quoted  by 
Driver,  Introduction  to  Old  Testament,  ed.  v.,  p.  xxxvi,  from 
Strack. 


PRIMITIVE  IDEAS  OF  DIVINE  REVELATION  11 


In  the  process  of  canonization  law  is  apt  to  take 
a  leading  part,  because  the  authority  of  law  is  a 
matter  of  immediate  practical  necessity.  Post-exilic 
Judaism  was  built  upon  it.  When  the  book  was 
endangered  martyrs  gave  their  lives  to  save  it.  But 
in  such  codes  as  the  Mosaic  there  is  at  first  no  dif¬ 
ferentiation  of  civil  from  criminal  law,  nor  even 
of  religious  ceremonial  from  secular  jurisprudence. 
Still  less  do  we  find  discrimination  between  the  ideal 
morality  of  inward  disposition  and  prescription  for 
external  conduct  such  as  the  administration  of  public 
justice  requires.  This  is  true,  of  course,  not  only 
of  the  Mosaic,  but  also  of  other  ancient  codes.  Still 
there  is  a  difference.  In  the  modern  court  room  lies 
the  Bible,  soiled  by  unreverent  kisses  of  witnesses, 
true  and  false.  This,  not  the  statute-books  at  the 
lawyers’  desks,  represents  invisible  divine  authority. 
Men  scarcely  realize  the  meaning  of  the  act.  It  is 
almost  forgotten  in  these  days  when  legislation  is 
cheap,  and  respect  for  the  product  of  our  wholesale 
lawmakers  corresponds  to  its  cheapness,  that  the 
laws  were  once  thought  of  as  divine,  and  those  who 
made  and  administered  them  were  called  by  poetic 
symbolism  “gods”  and  “sons  of  the  Most  High” 
(Ps.  82:6). 

Matters  were  somewhat  otherwise  in  the  old-time 
Jewish  court  room,  the  synagogue.  Here,  too,  was 
the  law-book  of  Moses,  the  Torah,  wrapped  in  its 
covering  embroidered  with  the  wedding  chaplets  of 
Israel’s  marriage  covenant  with  Jehovah  at  Sinai. 
With  it  in  the  shrine  are  “the  Prophets,”  narrative 


12  HE  OPENED  TO  US  THE  SCRIPTURES 


and  hortatory,  understood  to  be  interpretative  of  the 
Torah  to  successive  generations.  As  a  later  group, 
associated  ultimately  with  “the  law  and  the  pro¬ 
phets,”  are  the  “Writings”  of  poetry  and  philoso¬ 
phy,  and  the  hymns  of  temple  worship.  All  were 
counted  divinely  “inspired,”  but  not  independently. 
Prophets  and  writings  derived  their  authority  from 
the  Law.  They  had  no  other  function  than  to  shed 
further  light  upon  the  problem  how  Israel  should 
fulfill  Jehovah’s  will.  “Revelation”  and  “inspira¬ 
tion”  belonged  to  the  second  group  of  the  canon, 
but  by  a  reflected  light,  and  the  authority  of  the 
third  group  was  still  more  indirect. 

But  as  a  whole  the  book  represented  Jehovah.  It 
embodied  his  righteous  will.  The  conception  is 
significant  of  the  nature  of  Judaism  as  a  religion  of 
law.  Since  Ezra,  the  great  scribe,  laid  its  founda¬ 
tions  when  he  returned  from  Babylon  “with  the  book 
of  the  Law  of  his  God  in  his  hand,”  the  “lawyer,” 
that  is,  the  “scribe,”  has  sat  in  Moses’  seat.  Since 
the  time  that  there  has  been  such  a  thing  as  a 
synagogue  the  scribe  has  ruled  its  destinies ;  and  for 
it  the  attributes  of  revelation  and  inspiration  have 
attached  primarily  to  the  code  of  law.  This  consti¬ 
tutes  the  distinctive  feature  of  “Judaism,”  the  re¬ 
ligion  of  Israel  since  Ezra’s  reconstruction.  Poets, 
sages,  prophets,  obtained  in  time  1  that  place  along- 

^he  Prologue  of  Ecclesiasticus  (ca.  170  b.c.)  shows  a  canon 
consisting  of  “the  Law,  the  Prophets  and  the  other  books.”  But 
the  third  group,  the  Kethubim  (“writings”),  was  of  undetermined 
extent.  It  remained  unsettled  until  about  125  a.d. 


PRIMITIVE  IDEAS  OF  DIVINE  REVELATION  13 

side  the  Torah  which  belonged  to  them  by  inherent 
right,  and  which  the  religious  consciousness  of  wor¬ 
shipers  insistently  demanded.  The  older  literature 
remained  to  rekindle  prophetic  fires.  But  even  in 
its  highest  developments  the  Jewish  doctrine  of 
sacred  Scripture  remains  fundamentally  what  it  has 
been  from  Ezra’s  time,  a  doctrine  of  divine  Law; 
a  book  of  precepts  to  be  obeyed  under  sanction  of 
reward  and  penalty.  In  its  lower  forms  we  do  not 
need  to  be  told  how  largely  this  Jewish  doctrine  of 
sacred  Scripture  partook  of  the  superstitious  and 
magical  ideas  of  pagan  bibliolatry.  In  its  higher  ex¬ 
pressions  it  deserves  at  least  to  be  understood. 

Extravagant  utterances  of  rabbinic  writers,  such 
as  the  statement  that  the  Almighty  himself  spends 
the  morning  hours  of  each  day  in  the  study  of  his 
own  Torah,1  should  not  be  interpreted  as  sober 
prose.  They  employ  the  characteristic  method  of 
paradox  and  hyperbole  to  express  an  appreciation 
which  does  not  differ  in  essence  from  the  praises  of 
Psalm  19,  Psalm  119,  and  other  late  writers  for  the 
written  word.  The  sages  of  the  Wisdom  literature 
have  similar  praises  for  something  behind  the  letter, 
the  divine  “spirit  of  Wisdom.”  This  stands  over 
against  the  externalized  revelation  of  the  rabbis  as 
Luther’s  doctrine  of  the  Scriptures,  which  “contain 

1  The  paradoxical  saying  may  be  compared  with  the  Kantian 
principle  of  absolute  morality,  or  the  contemporary  Greek  con¬ 
ception  of  “fate”  to  which  Zeus  himself  must  bow.  The  rabbi 
looks  upon  the  Torah  as  the  reflection  of  absolute  right.  To  say 
that  Jehovah  himself  studies  it  is  only  a  poetic  way  of  saying 
God  himself  is  limited  to  that  which  is  right  (Gen.  18:25). 


14  HE  OPENED  TO  US  THE  SCRIPTURES 


the  word  of  God/’  stands  over  against  that  of  the 
post-Reformation  dogmatists,  who  decreed  that  they 
“are”  the  word  of  God.  Originally  Wisdom  ( hoq - 
mah)  was  conceived  as  an  exhalation  from  the 
Creator  himself  impregnating  the  human  under¬ 
standing.  Ultimately  it  was  identified  with  the  1 
written  Torah.  But  this  was  poetic  symbolism.1 

Doubtless  there  were  in  the  days  of  Jesus  and 
Paul,  as  now,  both  in  Synagogue  and  primitive 
Church,  differences  of  view.  There  may  well  have 
been  those  whose  conception  of  revelation  and  in¬ 
spiration  was  less  mechanical  and  literal  than  the 
expressions  of  Josephus,  and  even  of  Philo,  would 
imply.  We  must  make  room  for  both.  There  are 
no  Biblical  critics  so  unsparing  as  the  Bible  writers 
themselves.  One  must  go  to  a  Jeremiah  to  see  what 
a  living  prophet  can  say  of  the  codified  Torah  of 
priest  and  prophet  to  which  men  appealed  in  his 
time  (Jer.  7:21-28;  31:31-34).  One  must  go  to  the 
Sermon  on  the  Mount  in  the  New  Testament  to 
hear  similar  words  concerning  the  prescription  of 
“them  of  old  time,”  the  divine  authority  appealed 
to  by  scribe  and  Pharisee. 

When  one  attempts  to  characterize  the  Jewish 
doctrine  of  revelation  and  inspiration  over  against 
the  Christian  it  is  important  to  include  the  broader 
as  well  as  the  narrower  interpreters  on  both  sides. 
The  Talmud  classifies  them  as  belonging  to  the 

1  Cf .  Ecclus.  24:3  ff.  with  verses  23  ff.  appended  to  the  same 
poem,  and  Bar.  3:9-37  with  the  similar  supplement  appended 
in  4:1  ff. 


PRIMITIVE  IDEAS  OF  DIVINE  REVELATION  15 


school  of  Shammai  (strict  constructionists)  or  of 
Hillel  (liberals).  There  were  scribes  in  Jesus’  time 
who  were,  to  his  mind,  “not  far  from  the  kingdom  of 
God,”  because  they  responded  to  his  summary  of 
the  whole  Law  in  the  twofold  commandment  of  ab¬ 
solute  devotion  to  God  and  recognition  of  men  as 
sons  of  the  same  Father.  The  public  teaching  of 
Jesus  ends  with  the  saying  of  a  scribe  of  this  type: 
“Master,  thou  hast  well  said.  To  love  God  with 
all  the  heart,  all  the  understanding,  all  the  strength, 
and  to  love  one’s  neighbor  as  oneself  is  much  more 
than  all  whole  burnt  offering  and  sacrifice.” 

This  scribe  is  not  the  only  one.  A  century  later 
we  find  resistance  on  the  part  of  rabbis  in  the  schools 
of  Jamnia  to  attempts  to  override  the  sober  judg¬ 
ment  of  reason  and  conscience  expressed  in  the  vote 
of  the  assembly  by  appeal  to  vision  (contemporary), 
divine  revelation,  and  miracle.  The  boldness  of  these 
protests  astounds  the  Christian  scholar  unless  he 
be  aware  that  Jewish  rabbis  also  could  insist,  like 
Paul,  on  testing  the  spirits,  because  “the  spirits  of 
the  prophets  are  subject  to  the  prophets,”  or,  as 
Bishop  Butler  put  it  in  his  famous  Analogy :  “Rea¬ 
son  [in  which  he  would  include  the  moral  judg¬ 
ment]  is  the  only  faculty  we  have  whereby  to  judge 
of  anything,  were  it  of  revelation  itself.” 

While  the  sober  conservatism  of  the  Church  in  the 
second  century  was  bringing  under  control  the  un¬ 
bridled  millenarian  fanaticism  of  Montanus,  the  Syn¬ 
agogue  was  facing  a  like  danger.  Jewish  rabbis  were 
forced  to  discredit  appeals  to  miracle  and  “voices 


16  HE  OPENED  TO  US  THE  SCRIPTURES 


from  heaven/’  precisely  as  Christian  Church  fathers 
discredited  the  flood  of  apocalyses  and  thaumaturgy, 
until  but  a  single  writing  of  this  type  remained  in 
the  Christian  canon.  Even  the  so-called  “Apoca¬ 
lypse  of  John”  (self-styled  “Prophecy”)  barely  re¬ 
tained  its  hold,  and  in  only  a  portion  of  the  Church. 
However  well  worthy  of  the  place,  this  writing,  too, 
was  not  retained  for  its  own  sake  so  much  as  be¬ 
cause  it  was  ascribed  to  “a  great  apostle.”  When 
we  seek  to  define  the  Jewish  doctrine  of  revelation 
and  inspiration  in  the  time  of  Jesus  and  Paul,  utter¬ 
ances  of  the  sober-minded  rabbis  of  the  early  second 
century  must  be  taken  into  the  account  also.  We 
cannot  fairly  limit  ourselves  to  the  extravagances 
of  their  opponents,  such  as  R.  Eliezer,  and  the  half¬ 
pagan  laudations  of  Josephus  and  Philo.1 

1  If  any  man  lack  a  sense  of  humor  let  him  ask  of  God.  He 
may  receive  it  without  upbraiding  for  past  offenses.  But  let  him 
not  approach  the  Talmud  until  he  is  sure  that  his  prayer  has 
been  answered. 

In  no  less  than  three  different  passages  the  Talmud  illustrates 
the  disrepute  into  which  appeal  to  bath  qol  (=  voice  from  heaven, 
that  is,  contemporary  supernatural  revelation)  had  fallen,  by 
quoting  a  saying  of  R.  Samuel  invoked  by  R.  Judah:  “Every 
day  there  goes  forth  a  bath  qol  saying,  So  and  so’s  daughter  is 
intended  for  so  and  so.”  One  might  render  this  into  modern 
speech  by  saying,  “Every  time  a  young  couple  become  engaged 
they  want  you  to  believe  the  match  was  made  in  heaven.” 

Much  more  definite  still  is  the  story  and  connected  saying, 
“We  do  not  care  jor  bath  qol,”  which  is  appealed  to  again  and 
again  in  both  Babylonian  and  Jerusalem  Talmud,  to  establish 
the  principle  that  matters  of  law  and  conscience  ( halakha )  must 
be  settled  by  majority  vote,  not  by  appeal  to  the  supernatural. 
R.  Eliezer,  greatest  of  the  college  of  sages  at  Jamnia,  early  in 
the  second  century,  had  been  overruled  by  his  colleagues  on  a 
question  relating  to  the  purification  of  ovens.  He  refused  to 


PRIMITIVE  IDEAS  OF  DIVINE  REVELATION  17 


There  should  be  no  need  to  repeat  what  has  been 
so  admirably  said  by  the  late  Professor  Sanday  in 
his  Bampton  Lectures  for  1893  entitled  Inspiration, 
characterizing  the  “estimate  of  the  Old  Testament 

yield  the  point  and  began  an  appeal  to  miracle.  “Let  this  carob- 
tree  prove,”  said  he,  “that  the  halakha  prevails  as  I  state.”  The 
carob-tree  was  thereupon  miraculously  thrown  off  to  a  distance 
of  one  hundred  (or,  as  others  say,  four  hundred)  ells.  “But 
they  said,  ‘The  carob-tree  proves  nothing.’  Again  he  said,  ‘Then 
let  the  spring  of  water  prove  that  this  halakha  prevails.’  The 
water  began  to  run  uphill.  But  again  the  sages  said,  ‘This  proves 
nothing.’  Again  he  said,  ‘Then  let  the  walls  of  the  college  prove 
that  I  am  right’;  whereupon  the  walls  of  the  college  were  so 
shaken  that  they  were  about  to  fall.  But  R.  Joshua  rebuked 
them,  saying,  ‘If  the  sages  of  this  college  are  discussing  a  halakha 
what  business  have  you  to  interfere?’  So  they  stood  still.”  Thus 
Eliezer’s  appeal  to  miracle  was  ruled  out  of  court.  But  he  was 
still  undaunted.  In  last  resort  he  cried,  “Let  it  be  announced 
by  the  heavens  that  the  halakha  prevails  according  to  my  state¬ 
ment.”  Upon  this  a  bath  qol  was  heard,  saying,  “Why  do  you 
quarrel  with  R.  Eliezer,  who  is  always  right  in  his  decisions?” 
But  the  indomitable  R.  Joshua,  worthy  namesake  of  him  whose 
faith  overthrew  the  walls  of  a  greater  city  than  Jamnia,  not  over¬ 
awed  even  by  one  who  could  evoke  echoes  from  heaven  in  sup¬ 
port  of  his  views  and  thus  be  “always  right  in  his  decisions,” 
arose  and  quoted  Dt.  30:12 ff.:  “The  Torah  is  not  in  heaven, 
that  thou  shouldest  say,  Who  shall  go  up  for  us  to  heaven  and 
bring  it  to  us,  but  very  nigh  thee,  in  thy  heart  and  in  thy 
mouth.” 

There  may  be  literalists  so  deficient  in  sense  of  humor  as  not 
to  see  the  point  of  this  quite  fictitious  but  very  pointed  anec¬ 
dote.  It  is  for  the  sake  of  such  that  the  Talmud  appends  a 
comment  which  is  bolder  than  the  anecdote  itself  in  its  use 
of  expository  fiction.  “How  is  this  to  be  understood?  R.  Jere¬ 
miah  said,  ‘It  means,  The  Torah  was  already  given  to  us  on 
Mount  Sinai,  and  we  do  not  care  for  a  voice  from  heaven,  as  it 
reads  (Ex.  23:2  in  the  Targum),  “After  the  majority  shalt  thou 
fulfil  judgment.”  ’  ”  Then  it  goes  on,  telling  a  tale  to  reenforce 
a  tale,  “R.  Nathan  met  Elijah  the  prophet  (who  was  believed 
to  stand  in  the  presence  of  God),  and  asked  him,  ‘What  did  the 
Holy  One,  blessed  be  He,  when  R.  Joshua  made  this  decision?’ 


18  HE  OPENED  TO  US  THE  SCRIPTURES 


in  the  first  century  of  the  Christian  era”  (Lecture 
II,  pp.  70-90).  In  method  and  outline  it  would  be 
hard  to  improve  upon  our  great  English  scholar. 

We  have  three  principal  sources  for  determining 
what  was  the  Jewish  doctrine  of  inspired  Scripture, 
and  they  do  not  materially  differ  in  their  general 
conception ;  for  on  the  whole  it  remains  true  in  sub¬ 
stance  as  Loisy  has  said  ( Canon  de  V A .  T.,  p.  97) : 

The  Savior  and  the  Apostles  quoted  from  a 
body  of  divine  Scriptures,  and  it  does  not  appear 
that  in  their  teaching  they  desired  to  make  any 
innovation  so  far  as  the  extent  or  authority  of 
this  collection  are  concerned.  Neither  the  apos¬ 
tolic  writings  nor  the  tradition  of  the  Christian 
Church  afford  any  trace  of  an  explicit  decision 
laid  down  by  Jesus  Christ  or  the  Apostles  in  re¬ 
gard  to  the  canon  of  the  Old  Testament,  much 
less  a  decision  correcting  the  received  opinions  of 
the  Jewish  world. 

Taking  account  of  the  saving  clause  “so  far  as  the 
extent  or  authority  .  .  .  are  concerned”  this  gen¬ 
eral  statement  is  true,  in  spite  of  certain  implicit 
larger  principles  in  the  mode  of  approach  to  Scrip¬ 
ture  which  characterize  the  utterances  of  Jesus  and 
Paul,  and  even  to  some  extent  the  New  Testament 
writers.  These  principles,  however,  as  Sanday  him- 

Elijah  rejoined,  ‘He  laughed  and  said:  My  children  have  over¬ 
ruled  me.  My  children  have  overruled  me.’  ” 

It  is  perhaps  needless  to  add  that  in  spite  of  the  affinity  of 
thought  the  Talmudic  vindicators  of  the  right  of  reason  and 
conscience  to  overrule  revelation  itself  had  not  read  Butler’s 
Analogy. 


PRIMITIVE  IDEAS  OF  DIVINE  REVELATION  19 


self  considers,  enable  ministers  of  the  New  Covenant 
to  “transcend  current  Rabbinical  methods  in  a  man¬ 
ner  to  penetrate  more  deeply  to  the  heart  of  the 
Old  Testament  teaching.”  We  must  later  attempt 
to  define  these  principles  more  closely. 

In  order  of  date  the  three  sources  for  determining 
current  Jewish  belief  are:  (1)  Philo,  whose  works 
reach  down  to  about  40  a.d.  ;  (2)  the  New  Testa¬ 
ment,  beginning  with  I  Thessalonians  written  about 
50  a.d.,  a  group  of  writings  covering  at  least  the 
rest  of  the  century;  and  (3)  the  Antiquities  and 
Contra  Apionem  of  Josephus,  written  about  93-94 
a.d.  Sanday’s  survey  of  the  “properties  ascribed  to 
the  Old  Testament”  in  these  writings  is  as  complete 
and  impartial  as  could  be  desired,  and  requires  little, 
if  any,  supplementation  from  Talmudic  sources. 
For  the  Talmud  also,  although  not  reduced  to  syste¬ 
matic  written  form  till  some  two  centuries  later, 
gives  wholly  reliable  reports,  so  far  as  this  particular 
doctrine  is  concerned,  of  the  teachings  of  rabbis 
contemporary  with  Jesus  and  Paul.  Only,  when  we 
talk  of  “the  received  opinions  of  the  Jewish  world” 
as  endorsed  by  Jesus  and  the  Apostles,  let  us  re¬ 
member  that  the  phrase  (while  true  in  substance) 
is  very  general,  and  that  the  “received  opinions” 
were  not  then,  any  more  than  now,  all  of  one  kind. 

Philo’s  conception  of  inspiration  is  clearly  based 
on  the  utterances  of  the  “prophets  who  spake  in 
the  name  of  the  Lord.”  To  some  extent  the  old 
mantic  idea  survives  of  the  seer  “falling  down  and 
having  his  eyes  opened”  (Num.  24:4).  Vision  and 


20  HE  OPENED  TO  US  THE  SCRIPTURES 


trance  have  always  been  the  convenient  avenues  of 
communication  from  the  unseen,  and  at  least  the 
form  of  these  is  retained  even  in  the  written 
prophecies  of  the  literary  period.  We  cannot  be 
quite  sure,  when  we  read  the  accounts  of  their 
divine  call  given  by  Isaiah,  Jeremiah,  and  Ezekiel, 
precisely  how  much  of  this  apparatus  of  vision  and 
mystical  audition  is  literary  convention,  as  in  Bun- 
yan’s  Pilgrim’s  Progress,  and  how  much  is  actual 
trance.  In  Daniel  the  visions  are  certainly  literary 
conventions,  and  this  applies  still  more  to  Enoch 
and  the  later  apocalypses;  for  they  obviously  imitate 
one  another  in  reproducing  these  descriptions.  All 
that  we  can  say  with  certainty  is  that  men  like 
Amos,  Hosea,  Micah,  Isaiah,  Jeremiah,  and  Ezekiel 
were  profoundly  conscious  that  they  were  commis¬ 
sioned  by  Jehovah  with  a  message  for  his  people. 
The  more  directly  this  message  was  concerned  with 
justice,  mercy,  and  loyalty,  the  greater  the  prophet’s 
consciousness  of  divine  authority.  For  men  like 
Amos,  Micah,  Isaiah,  were  at  least  as  conscious  as 
we  that  the  Power  not  ourselves  that  moves  through 
history  is  one  that  “makes  for  righteousness.”  Jus¬ 
tice  and  judgment  were  to  them  the  habitation  of 
Jehovah’s  throne. 

Spiritual  vision  and  audition  were  in  the  time  of 
the  literary  prophets  the  immemorial  methods 
through  which  first  the  seer,  afterward  the  prophet 
(I  Sam.  9:9),  had  conveyed  such  messages  from 
Jehovah,  and  writers  such  as  Isaiah  naturally  use 
these  immemorial  forms.  Even  Amos,  who  declines 


PRIMITIVE  IDEAS  OF  DIVINE  REVELATION  21 


the  title  of  “prophet”  (debased  as  it  was  in  his  time) 
and  scorns  the  prophets’  pretense  of  being  the  confi¬ 
dants  of  Jehovah’s  secrets  (Am.  7:14  f. ;  3:7  f.),  does 
not  disdain  the  method  (Am.  7:1,  4,  7;  8:1;  9:1). 
But  the  content  of  the  prophet’s  message  as  time 
goes  on  becomes  more  and  more  religious  and  moral. 
He  is  no  longer  concerned,  like  the  seer,  with  ques¬ 
tions  as  to  where  strayed  asses  are  to  be  sought.  In 
Isaiah’s  time  the  true  prophet  had  become  the  states¬ 
man  of  Jehovah,  to  declare  the  divine  purpose  which 
his  servant,  Israel,  must  perform.  Centuries  later, 
when  the  writings  of  these  men  had  become  canon¬ 
ized,  a  Philo  will  undertake  to  define  for  his  con¬ 
temporaries  what  is  implied  in  the  prophet’s  “Thus 
saith  Jehovah.”  As  a  theologian,  and  for  the  pur¬ 
pose  of  making  apparent  to  all  that  the  sacred  writ¬ 
ings  do  indeed  contain  a  divine  message,  he  will 
quite  naturally  insist  upon  the  apparatus  and  mode 
of  reception,  taking  all  the  references  to  spiritual 
sight  and  hearing  in  the  most  literal  sense. 

For  a  prophet,  says  Philo,  gives  forth  noth¬ 
ing  of  his  own,  but  acts  as  interpreter  ai;  the 
prompting  of  another  in  all  his  utterances;  and 
as  long  as  he  is  under  inspiration  he*  is  in  ig¬ 
norance,  his  reason  departing  from  its  place  and 
yielding  up  the  citadel  of  his  soul,  whereupon  the 
Divine  Spirit  enters  into  it  and  dwells  in  it  and 
plays  upon  the  mechanism  of  his  voice,  sounding 
through  it  to  the  clear  utterance  of  that  which  he 
prophesieth  (de  spec.  legg.  iv.  8). 

We  recognize  here  the  favorite  figure  of  the  flute- 
player,  which  passes  on  through  Jewish  writers  to 


22  HE  OPENED  TO  US  THE  SCRIPTURES 


Christian.  The  Divine  Spirit  is  the  breath,  the  in¬ 
spired  speaker  is  a  mere  instrument.  His  faculties 
are  so  subordinated  to  the  will  of  the  Spirit  that 
nothing  of  his  own  enters  into  the  utterance,  any 
more  than  the  flute  utters  a  melody  of  its  own  com¬ 
position.1 

Josephus  uses  almost  the  same  language  as  Philo. 

For  those  who  fancy  that  of  themselves  they 
can  foretell  the  fortunes  of  men  are  all  too  weak 
to  help  saying  what  God  suggests  to  them,  or  to 
resist  His  will;  for  when  He  has  entered  into  us 
nothing  that  is  in  us  is  any  longer  our  own  (Ant. 
IV.  vi.  5). 

The  conception  is  so  completely  familiar  to  us 
through  even  very  modern  writers  that  we  have  no 
need  to  give  further  examples.2  The  special  interest 

1  So,  for  example,  Athenagoras  (Leg.  pro  Christ,  ix.) :  “While 
entranced  and  deprived  of  their  natural  powers  of  reason  the 
prophets  uttered  by  the  influence  of  the  divine  Spirit  that  which 
was  wrought  in  them,  the  Spirit  using  them  as  its  instruments, 
as  a  flute-player  might  blow  a  flute.” 

a  For  a  representative  statement  the  reader  may  be  referred 
to  The  Inspired  Word,  a  series  of  papers  and  addresses  deliv¬ 
ered  at  the  Bible-Inspiration  Conference,  Philadelphia,  1887. 
Edited  by  Arthur  T.  Pierson.  The  Rev.  James  H.  Brookes,  D.D., 
author  of  the  essay  entitled  “Theories  of  Inspiration”  (pp.  145- 
165),  maintains  that  “The  Holy  Spirit  dwells  in  the  believer,  con¬ 
trolling  his  speech  and  actions,  without  reducing  him  to  the  help¬ 
less  condition  of  an  unthinking  machine  (a  protest  against  the 
designation  ‘mechanical’  applied  to  this  type  of  doctrine),  and 
without  changing  his  style  or  natural  gifts  and  tendencies.”  To 
the  objection  that  under  his  conception  “the  four  accounts  of 
the  inscription  on  the  cross  of  our  Lord  would  have  been  pre¬ 
cisely  alike,”  he  replies  that  it  was  the  special  design  of  God 
in  the  preparation  of  the  Gospels  that  all  four  taken  to- 


PRIMITIVE  IDEAS  OF  DIVINE  REVELATION  23 


of  the  passage  from  Josephus  is  that  it  tells  us  just 
whence  it  is  derived.  Balaam  is  supposed  to  be 
speaking,  and  Josephus  is  merely  paraphrasing 
Numbers  23:1-12  to  explain  the  nature  of  inspira¬ 
tion.  He  describes  Balaam  as  prophesying  “not  as 
master  of  himself  but  moved  to  say  what  he  did 
by  the  Divine  Spirit.”  Hence  Balaam  says  to  Balak, 
“Thinkest  thou  that  it  is  in  our  power  to  speak  or 
be  silent  when  the  Spirit  of  God  takes  possession  of 
us?  For  he  causes  us  to  utter  words  such  as  he 
wills  and  speeches  without  our  knowledge.” 

But  very  manifestly  Josephus  in  thus  harking 
back  to  Balaam  is  not  laying  hold  upon  that  element 
of  Hebrew  prophecy  which  gave  it,  as  we  have  seen, 
its  high  distinction.  It  was  its  ethical  content  which 
raised  Jewish  prophecy  above  the  mere  half-heathen 
mantic  and  shamanism  from  which  it  sprang,  while 
only  telltale  and  obsolescent  vestiges  of  its  origin 
remained  attached  to  the  outward  form  of  its  mes¬ 
sage.  Josephus  is  taking  just  the  opposite  course 
from  that  which  he  should  have  taken  to  follow  the 
lead  of  the  prophets  themselves.  He  is  shutting  his 
eyes  to  the  moral  message  which  made  Hebrew 
prophecy  great  in  the  genuine  consciousness  of  speak¬ 
ing  for  the  eternal  God  of  truth  and  righteousness, 


gether  should  form  the  complete  inscription.  For  this  reason 
“the  Holy  Ghost  required  the  writers  to  arrange  the  words  ac¬ 
cording  to”  this  design  (p.  164  f.).  The  illustration  chosen  by 
Dr.  Brookes  will  show  to  what  extent  his  doctrine  of  “verbal 
inspiration”  differs  from  that  of  the  ancient  writers  we  have 
quoted,  and  whether  it  does  or  does  not  deserve  the  epithet 
“mechanical.” 


24  HE  OPENED  TO  US  THE  SCRIPTURES 


while  he  emphasizes  those  outworn  elements  of 
soothsaying  and  thaumaturgy  which  were  the  main 
reliance  of  the  false  prophets  denounced  by  men  like 
Amos  and  Jeremiah.  The  visions  and  vaticinations 
of  the  false  prophets  are  indistinguishable  from 
pagan  man  tic,  and  Philo  and  Josephus,  when  they 
ignore  the  difference  in  moral  content,  revert  to 
this. 

For  what  is  there  to  differentiate  this  conception 
of  inspiration  as  the  displacement  of  the  human 
reason  and  conscience  by  an  outside  power  from 
the  soothsaying  of  pagan  oracles  and  mediums 
“possessed  with  a  spirit  of  divination”?  Philo’s  ex¬ 
ample  is  not  indeed  Balaam,  but  Abraham  in  the 
“trance”  which  came  upon  him  “about  the  setting 
of  the  sun”  (Gen.  15:12;  cf.  Quis  rerum  divinarum 
heres,  53).  The  sun,  says  Philo,  here  represents 
the  light  of  human  reason,  which  must  set  in  order 
to  give  place  to  the  Spirit  of  God. 

So  long  then  as  our  mind  shines  and  stirs  about 
us,  pouring  as  it  were  noontide  brightness  into 
every  corner  of  the  soul,  we  are  masters  of  our¬ 
selves  and  are  not  possessed;  but  when  it  draws 
to  its  setting,  then  it  is  natural  that  the  trance 
of  inspiration  should  fall  upon  us,  seizing  upon 
us  with  a  sort  of  frenzy.  For  when  the  divine 
light  begins  to  shine,  the  human  sets;  and  when 
the  human  sets  below  the  horizon,  the  other  ap¬ 
pears  above  it  and  rises.  This  is  what  constantly 
happens  to  the  prophet.  The  mind  in  us  is  ex¬ 
pelled  at  the  arrival  of  the  Divine  Spirit  and  re¬ 
turns  again  to  its  home  at  His  removal.  For  it 


PRIMITIVE  IDEAS  OF  DIVINE  REVELATION  25 


may  not  be  that  mortal  dwell  with  immortal.  So 
the  setting  of  the  reason  and  the  darkness  that 
gathers  round  it  generates  an  ecstasy  and  heaven- 
caused  madness. 

Be  the  example  chosen  Balaam  or  Abraham,  in  the 
essential  point,  exclusion  of  the  faculties  of  reason 
and  conscience  from  their  rightful  control,  Philo  and 
Josephus  hark  back  to  heathenism.  They  stand  at 
the  opposite  pole  from  the  New  Testament  writers, 
who  protest  against  such  abdication  of  reason  and 
conscience  (I  Thess.  5:19-21;  I  Cor.  12— 14 ;  cf.  I 
Jn.  4:1  ff.).  The  Jewish  writers  in  their  eagerness 
to  claim  miraculous  attributes  for  the  sacred  writ¬ 
ings  of  their  own  people  ignore  the  vital  distinction 
of  spiritual  content,  and  turn  back  to  such  supposed 
characteristics  of  form  as  would  most  commend  them 
to  the  heathen  mind.  What  they  are  claiming  for 
Abraham  and  the  prophets  is  exactly  the  same 
which  Lucan  claims  for  the  priestess  who  uttered 
the  oracles  for  the  Pythian  Apollo:  “The  god  en¬ 
ters  into  her,  driving  out  her  former  mind,  and 
compels  everything  that  is  human  in  her  breast  to 
give  place  to  himself/’  Sanday  rightly  points  out 
that  the  very  language  of  Philo  shows  his  purpose  of 
assimilation  to  current  heathen  ideas  of  “inspira¬ 
tion.” 


The  words  of  which  he  is  fondest,  xpyvpos,  ^oyiov, 

pavLa,  lepoc^avTrjs,  Upo^avrelv,  6eo(f)6priTOs,  kmOeia^oo,  kvOov - 

<nav}  are  characteristic  of  Greek  “man tic,”  and  es¬ 
pecially  of  the  application  of  it  to  philosophy  by 
Plato.  ...  In  like  manner  it  is  from  Neo- 


26  HE  OPENED  TO  US  THE  SCRIPTURES 


pythagoreanism  that  Philo  gets  the  idea  of  the 
mystical  vision  of  God.  As  compared  with 
Josephus  he  lays  greater  stress  on  the  ecstatic 
state  in  the  recipient  of  revelation;  the  soul  is 
wholly  possessed  and  loses  self-consciousness. 
.  .  .  Josephus  is  simpler,  and  keeps  closer  to 
the  Biblical  accounts;  he  writes  as  a  historian, 
and  not  as  a  speculative  philosopher  or  theologian ; 
but  the  underlying  conception  in  both  writers 
can  hardly  be  said  to  differ. 

In  short,  Jewish  writers  of  the  period  of  Jesus  and 
Paul,  when  they  attempt  to  speak  “as  speculative 
philosophers  or  theologians,”  or  even  as  interpreters 
to  the  Gentile  world  of  the  marvelous  value  of  their 
sacred  books,  unfortunately  fail  to  stress  those  in¬ 
ward  moral  and  spiritual  characteristics  which 
Jesus  and  Paul  found  in  them,  and  which  we  of  to¬ 
day  would  chiefly  value.  They  revert  to  certain 
alleged  miraculous  and  external  characteristics  of 
the  prophetic  writings  not  essential  to  their  religious 
value,  which  are,  however,  of  the  same  kind  as 
these  ascribed  to  heathen  oracles  and  soothsaying. 
This  is  progress  backward.  It  is  difficult  to  believe 
that  Isaiah  and  Jeremiah  would  have  been  satisfied 
with  these  well-meant  attempts  to  explain  the  na¬ 
ture  of  their  “inspiration.”  It  was  something  else 
which  distinguished  them  from  the  “false  prophets.” 


CHAPTER  II 

HOW  CHRISTIAN  WRITERS  CONCEIVE  OF 
THEIR  OWN  INSPIRATION 


CHAPTER  II 


HOW  CHRISTIAN  WRITERS  CONCEIVE  OE  THEIR 

OWN  INSPIRATION 

We  have  seen  that  the  truly  impartial  and  his¬ 
torical  interpreter  of  Old  Testament  prophecy  has 
no  task  more  difficult  than  to  determine  just  how 
much  of  the  representation  of  trance,  vision,  or 
spiritual  audition  is  meant  as  real  experience,  and 
how  much  is  literary  form  and  convention.  The 
task  is  not  easier  in  the  New  Testament.  On  the 
one  side  stands  the  undoubted  case  of  Paul,  caught 
away  in  ecstasy  to  the  third  heaven,  where  he  hears 
things  inexpressible,  and  cannot  tell  whether  he  was 
in  the  body  or  out  of  the  body.  On  the  other  side 
stand  a  multitude  of  literary  parallels  of  the  same 
period,  both  canonical  and  uncanonical,  in  a  large 
proportion  of  which  similar  experiences  are  related 
but  certainly  as  matter  of  mere  literary  form.  The 
fact  of  literary  convention  is  certain,  if  only  be¬ 
cause  in  many  instances  the  authors  copy  from  one 
another.  Among  these  literary  products  (mainly  of 
the  type  known  as  “revelations”  or  “apocalyses”) 
are  many  whose  moral  earnestness  and  sincerity  are 
unquestioned,  although  the  apparatus  of  transport 

to  heaven,  or  mystical  sight  and  hearing,  is  not 

29 


30  HE  OPENED  TO  US  THE  SCRIPTURES 


due  to  psychic  temperament,  but  is  as  certainly  a 
matter  of  literary  convention  as  Kipling’s  scene  of 
Tomlinson  at  the  gate  of  heaven. 

It  is  true  that  “visions  and  revelations  of  the 
Lord”  were  a  source  of  wonder  and  admiration  in 
the  early  Church,  greatly  sought  after  and  even 
superinduced  by  fasting  and  ascetic  practices.  But 
not  all  the  fishermen  of  Galilee  were  psychics,  and 
Paul  himself  regards  his  own  experience  as  excep¬ 
tional,  though  he  would  have  all  his  converts  see 
“having  the  eyes  of  their  heart  enlightened,”  and 
hear  with  the  inward  ear.  By  such  invisible  organs 
of  the  soul  “spiritual  things  are  spiritually  dis¬ 
cerned.”  Contemporary  utterances  recorded  in  the 
Talmud  use  the  conventional  forms  of  vision  and 
“voice  from  heaven”  ( bath  qol )  as  mere  modes  of 
saying:  “So  the  matter  would  appear  if  looked  at 
from  the  spiritual  point  of  view.” 

Again,  if  we  take  the  authentic  utterances  of 
Mohammed  in  the  Koran,  his  descriptions  of 
ecstatic  experience  go  far  beyond  those  of  Paul, 
and  are  honestly  meant,  even  when  he  declares  him¬ 
self  to  have  been  miraculously  transported  from 
Mecca  to  Jerusalem  in  a  moment  of  time.  Here  is 
real  psychological  experience,  however  illusive  to  the 
psychopathic  subject.  Mohammed  describes  his  ex¬ 
perience  as  it  appeared  to  him.  Commentators  on 
the  Koran,  on  the  other  hand,  use  the  same  or  sim¬ 
ilar  expressions  in  a  sense  which  is  not  real  but 
conventional.  Mohammed  and  Paul  were  actual 
cataleptics.  So  were  many  of  the  ancient  sooth- 


HOW  WRITERS  CONCEIVE  INSPIRATION  31 


sayers,  whether  by  natural  nervous  constitution  or 
by  processes  of  self-hypnosis  acquired  by  diligent 
and  often  painful  asceticism.  By  slow  degrees  the 
transition  is  made  through  disciples,  followers,  and 
imitators  to  a  use  of  the  same  terminology  of  mys¬ 
tical  vision  and  audition  which  is  unmistakably  con¬ 
ventional,  a  pure  literary  form,  as  in  the  Talmud 
and  many  of  the  later  apocalypses.  Where,  then, 
shall  the  line  be  drawn? 

The  distinctive  feature  in  ancient  belief  was  that 
mystical  vision  or  audition  corresponds  to  reality. 
Only  those  whose  inward  or  spiritual  eye  is  opened 
are  cognizant  of  what  transpires;  but  this  makes 
no  difference  with  the  fact.  Often  the  outward 
eye  or  ear  is  closed  so  that  the  inward  may  better 
perceive  the  true  realities.  A  Luther  might  be  in 
doubt  whether  the  devil  who  tempted  him  at  the 
Wartburg  were  a  figment  of  his  own  brain  or  no, 
or  the  voice  which  interrupted  his  act  of  penitence 
on  the  Scala  Santa  crying,  “The  just  shall  live  by 
faith,”  something  more  than  the  echo  of  his  own 
unconscious  thought.  But,  to  the  ancient,  the  ex¬ 
perience  had  always  an  external  cause.  Evil  spirits 
might  delude,  but  true  “vision”  is  a  heaven-sent 
power  to  perceive  what  is  actually  transpiring  be¬ 
hind  the  “veil”  of  sense.  Hence  at  Elisha’s  prayer 
his  frightened  servant  can  be  admitted  to  the  same 
perception  of  the  protecting  hosts  of  God  about 
them  which  gives  fearlessness  to  the  prophet  (II 
Kings  6:14-17). 

In  New  Testament  times  the  same  belief  is  still 


32  HE  OPENED  TO  US  THE  SCRIPTURES 


dominant.  Cornelius  can  see  Peter,  and  Paul 
Ananias,  performing  the  acts  God  directs  them  to 
perform  (Acts  9:12;  10:3-6).  Three  persons  (Mt. 
17:1-9),  or  five  hundred  (I  Cor.  15:6)  can  have 
the  same  vision  at  the  same  time  without  difficulty. 
The  only  requirement  is  that  all  should  have  “the 
eyes  of  the  heart  enlightened.”  This  belief  leads 
some  whose  nervous  constitution  or  condition  is 
abnormal  to  set  a  special  value  on  impressions  thus 
registered  upon  the  mind.  It  leads  others  equally 
sure  of  having  a  message  from  God,  but  not  path¬ 
ologically  affected,  to  avail  themselves  of  the  mode 
of  speech  characteristic  of  the  mystic.  They  use 
the  conventional  terms  for  the  purpose  of  convey¬ 
ing  the  “spiritual  things”  which  they  have  “spirit¬ 
ually  discerned.”'  Not  all  who  use  the  language  of 
ecstatics  in  New  Testament  or  Old  are  to  be  set 
down  as  “psychics.”  Something  must  be  conceded 
to  current  modes  of  speech,  as  when  Jesus  says  to 
the  Seventy,  on  their  return  from  a  successful  mis¬ 
sion,  “I  beheld  Satan  fallen  as  lightning  from 
heaven.”  Capernaum,  too,  is  compared  to  the 
Lucifer  of  Isaiah  14:12  “exalted  to  heaven”;  but 
when  Jesus  uses  this  figure  and  then  goes  on  to 
say,  “Thou  shalt  be  cast  down  to  Gehenna”  he 
must  be  allowed  to  have  some  sense  of  the  distinc¬ 
tion  between  prose  and  poetry.  A  literary  age  uses 
the  current  coinage  of  conventional  forms. 

The  task  of  the  historical  interpreter  is  to  take 
account  of  the  current  beliefs  of  antiquity  and  their 
effect  upon  modes  of  speech  and  composition.  The 


HOW  WRITERS  CONCEIVE  INSPIRATION  33 


task  of  the  religious  interpreter  is  to  make  such  dis¬ 
crimination  between  form  and  substance  that  he 
may  not  take  the  shell  for  the  living  animal,  but, 
recognizing  life  and  motion,  may  see  how  knowl¬ 
edge  grows  from  more  to  more  in  the  apprehension 
of  things  really  divine.  When  this  is  done  he  will 
not  greatly  marvel  that  an  apostle  like  Paul  should 
share  the  current  belief  regarding  things  seen  and 
heard  in  ecstasy.  He  will  rather  wonder  that  Paul 
should  refrain  from  all  mention  of  this  save  when 
forced  to  “glory”  while  acknowledging  that  “it  is  not 
expedient.”  Most  of  all  will  he  marvel  that  in  other 
connections  the  Apostle  should  make  it  an  abso¬ 
lute  rule  for  the  Church  that  “revelations”  received 
under  such  abnormal  conditions  are  not  to  be  ac¬ 
cepted  as  from  God  till  they  have  been  subjected  to 
the  tests  of  sober  reason  and  conscience.  The  Apostle 
is  not  the  creator  but  the  critic  of  the  convention. 

Where,  then,  lies  the  superiority?  It  is  not  the 
mere  fact  that  Paul  shares  the  ecstatic  gifts  on  which 
his  Corinthian  converts  pride  themselves  that  proves 
his  greatness,  but  the  fact  that  he  refuses  to  place 
the  Corinthian  value  on  them.  So  with  the  prophets 
of  Isaiah’s  time.  They  are  not  great  merely  because 
they  paint  in  colors  which  rival  or  transcend  those 
of  the  false  prophets  the  splendid  destiny  of  Israel. 
Some  had  a  message  of  doom  unrelieved.  As  has 
been  well  said,  the  prophets  did  not  originate,  they 
sublimated  the  messianic  hope.  They  were  great 
because  they  raised  the  accepted  national  hope  to 
higher  levels  of  moral  and  religious  idealism.  In- 


34  HE  OPENED  TO  US  THE  SCRIPTURES 


deed,  what  else  is  the  work  of  Jesus  himself?  How 
else  does  his  conception  of  the  messianic  hope  stand 
related  to  the  ideals  and  expectations  of  his  time? 

We  have  already  given  instances  from  Philo  and 
Josephus  to  show  how  largely  Jewish  conceptions 
of  the  nature  of  revelation  and  inspiration  still  par¬ 
took  of  the  common  elements  of  ancient  soothsay¬ 
ing.  It  would  be  easy  to  multiply  these  from  other 
Jewish  writings  of  the  period.  But  there  is  no  need. 
Nor  would  it  be  fair  to  Judaism  of  the  time  of  Jesus 
and  Paul;  for  even  the  age  of  still  stricter  legalism 
and  bibliolatry  which  supervened  after  the  breach 
with  Christianity  and  the  overthrow  of  the  temple 
and  its  ritual  had  its  protests  against  fanaticism. 
Rabbinic  Judaism  itself  would  not  tolerate  the  de¬ 
thronement  of  sober  reason  and  conscience.  In 
fact,  we  have  already  cited  from  the  Talmud  an 
example  of  rebellion  against  the  attempt  to  make 
ecstasy  and  miracle  the  arbiters  in  matters  of  faith 
and  practice,  and  have  shown  it  to  be  contemporary 
with  the  Church’s  protest  against  Montanus. 

It  seems  hardly  credible  that  the  same  period  in 
the  history  of  the  Synagogue  should  produce,  on  the 
one  side,  the  bold  defiance  launched  by  Joshua  ben 
Hananiah  against  the  appeal  of  Eliezer  ben  Hyrcanos 
to  supernatural  attestation,  and,  on  the  other,  claims 
of  precisely  the  same  supernaturalistic  kind  as  those 
of  Philo  and  Josephus,  which  rest  the  authority  of 
Moses  and  the  prophets  on  no  better  foundation 
than  visions,  miracles,  and  “voices  from  heaven.” 
However,  our  own  times  do  not  lack  examples  of 


HOW  WRITERS  CONCEIVE  INSPIRATION  35 


the  application  of  one  style  of  reasoning  to  records 
contained  within  the  canon,  and  a  very  different 
style  to  uncanonical  testimony.  The  truth  is  that 
both  Talmud  and  New  Testament  contain  elements 
of  both  conceptions.  Heathenish  and  Jewish,  Jewish 
and  Christian,  stand  side  by  side.  In  general,  the 
same  primitive  and  magical  conception  of  inspira¬ 
tion  which  we  find  in  Philo  and  Josephus  pervades 
the  Talmudic  writings  also.  It  is  the  current  con¬ 
ception  of  the  time,  not  distinguishable  in  any  es¬ 
sential  feature  from  pagan  soothsaying,  and  only 
less  prominent  in  the  New  Testament  than  in  the 
Talmud.  The  striking  thing  is  that  the  prophetic 
sense  of  moral  and  religious  values  is  also  present, 
biding  its  time  to  cast  out  the  discarded  shell. 

Students  of  the  New  Testament  and  the  Apostolic 
Fathers  hardly  need  to  be  told  that  the  ordinary 
use  of  the  canonical  books  of  the  Old  Testament 
(and  even  of  books,  such  as  Enoch,  which  are  no 
longer  reckoned  as  canonical)  by  New  Testament 
writers  and  their  immediate  successors,  implies  sub¬ 
stantially  the  same  ideas  as  those  of  Philo,  Josephus, 
and  the  Talmud.  To  Paul,  the  prescription  “Thou 
shalt  not  muzzle  the  ox  that  treadeth  out  the  corn” 
is  a  divine  provision  for  teachers  of  the  gospel  in 
his  own  time  who  “tread  out”  spiritual  sustenance 
for  their  hearers.1  The  use  of  the  collective  noun 
“seed”  instead  of  the  plural  “seeds”  in  the  promise 

1  In  Synagogue  nomenclature  the  expounder  of  Scripture  is  a 
“treader  out”  ( darshan ),  and  the  spiritual  nourishment  he  thus 
provides  for  the  people  is  grain  “trodden  out”  {midrash). 


36  HE  OPENED  TO  US  THE  SCRIPTURES 


to  Abraham  is  to  the  Apostle  a  “preaching  of  the 
gospel  beforehand”  by  divine  providence  to  pre¬ 
clude  the  idea  that  there  could  be  in  the  end  more 
than  one  people  of  God  (Gal.  3:16).  For  the 
evangelists  events  occur  “in  order  that  the  word 
might  be  fulfilled  which  was  spoken  by  the  Lord 
through  the  prophet.”  Clement  of  Rome  declares 
that  “the  Scriptures  are  true,  given  through  the 
Holy  Ghost,  and  nothing  unrighteous  or  counter¬ 
feit  is  written  in  them”  (45:1).  They  are  “sacred,” 
“oracles  of  God”  (53:1).  Barnabas  proves  in  how 
magical  a  sense  he  takes  the  conception  by  fantastic 
allegorizing  of  Scripture  passages.  Hermas,  on  the 
other  hand  ( Mandate  xi),  gives  elaborate  direc¬ 
tions  for  testing  (contemporary)  prophecy,  because 
many 

practice  soothsaying  like  the  Gentiles,  and  bring 
upon  themselves  greater  sin  by  their  idolatries. 
For  he  that  consulteth  a  false  prophet  on  any 
matter  is  an  idolater  and  emptied  of  the  truth,  and 
senseless.  For  no  spirit  given  of  God  needeth  to 
be  consulted,  but  having  the  power  of  deity 
speaketh  all  things  of  its  own  accord,  because  it 
is  from  above,  even  from  the  power  of  the  divine 
Spirit. 

The  Angel  of  Repentance  thereupon  instructs  Her¬ 
mas  how  he  may  distinguish  a  prophet  from  a  false 
prophet.  The  man  who  has  a  divine  spirit  is  first 
of  all  righteous  in  life,  then 

when  he  cometh  into  an  assembly  of  righteous 
men  who  have  faith  in  a  divine  spirit,  and  inter- 


HOW  WRITERS  CONCEIVE  INSPIRATION  37 


cession  is  made  to  God  by  the  gathering  of  those 
men,  then  the  (particular)  angel  of  the  (uni¬ 
versal)  prophetic  Spirit  who  is  attached  to  him 
filleth  the  man,  and  the  man  being  filled  with 
that  holy  spirit  speaketh  to  the  multitude  ac¬ 
cording  as  the  Lord  willeth. 

False  prophets  take  money  for  their  soothsaying,  and 
otherwise  manifest  their  moral  unworthiness.  Her¬ 
nias  makes  no  application  of  this  principle  of  moral 
distinction  to  prophecy  and  false  prophecy  in  Jere¬ 
miah’s  time,  for  the  simple  reason  that  he  and  his 
contemporaries  regard  the  prophecy  which  comes 
down  to  them  under  canonical  authority  as  having 
already  received  competent  approval.  But  he  and 
his  fellow  prophets  and  teachers  of  this  period,  such 
as  the  compiler  of  The  Teaching  of  the  Twelve , 
apply  to  contemporary  prophecy  rules  for  such  dis¬ 
crimination.  And  these  rules  spring  directly  from 
the  principles  inculcated  by  Paul  and  “John.” 

It  is  apparent,  therefore,  that  as  concerns  that  ser¬ 
vitude  to  the  letter  of  which  Paul  complains  in 
Judaism  (II  Cor.  3:6  ff.)  Christianity  does  not 
emancipate  itself  at  a  single  stroke.  The  protest  is 
made  in  individual  cases,  as  occasion  requires.  Just 
as  Joshua  ben  Hananiah  has  little  idea  how  far  the 
principle  he  invokes  would  carry  him  if  consistently 
applied,  so  even  Paul  only  makes  application  of  his 
own  principle  of  the  supreme  authority  of  that 
Spirit  which  reveals  itself  as  divine  by  its  Christ- 
like  attributes,  to  the  particular  vagaries  of 
“prophecy”  in  Christian  assemblies  of  his  own  mis- 


38  HE  OPENED  TO  US  THE  SCRIPTURES 


sion  field.  This  is,  of  course,  even  more  patently 
the  case  with  the  supporters  of  the  transmitted 
“rule  of  faith”  against  millenarian  fanaticism  in  the 
days  of  Montanus.  The  principles  are  there  in  the 
life  and  teaching  of  Jesus,  ready  to  be  applied  as 
issues  develop  in  successive  ages.  But  to  each  age 
its  own.  Issues  are  not  settled  in  advance,  save  by 
analogy  of  precedent. 

In  spite  of  the  fact  that  in  some  degree  Rabbinic 
teaching  shares  with  Christianity  the  great  principle 
which  distinguishes  Old  Testament  prophecy  from 
heathen  manticism,  and  continues  now  and  then 
to  assert  the  authority  of  reason  and  conscience 
even  against  supernaturalism,  the  impartial  his¬ 
torian  will  hardly  venture  to  deny  that  as  between 
Synagogue  and  Church  it  is  the  latter  which  reveals 
the  larger  liberty.  The  great  rabbis  who  recon¬ 
structed  Judaism  after  the  overthrow  of  the  temple, 
carried  the  example  of  Ezra  to  the  acme  in  making 
the  written  Torah  the  foundation  of  their  religious 
commonwealth.  In  higher  degree  than  ever  before 
Israel  became  “the  people  of  the  book.”  The  Sad- 
ducee  became  a  mere  heretic.  The  scribe  was  su¬ 
preme. 

Talmudic  enslavement  to  the  letter  of  the  written 
revelation  has  become  proverbial;  but  in  certain 
periods  and  among  certain  elements  of  the  Church 
also  a  similar  type  of  bibiiolatry  must  be  admitted 
to  have  prevailed.  From  the  known  history  of  our 
religion  we  could  expect  nothing  else.  Still,  none 
will  deny  that,  taken  as  a  whole,  it  is  Christianity, 


HOW  WRITERS  CONCEIVE  INSPIRATION  39 


rather  than  Judaism,  which  laid  emphasis  upon  the 
progressive  nature  of  revelation.  The  sense  of  moral 
values  which  distinguished  prophecy  from  sooth¬ 
saying  was  transmitted  to  Synagogue  and  Church 
alike.  But  the  Church  showed  larger  capacity  to 
avail  itself  of  the  inheritance.  Whether  because  of 
the  splendid  utterance  of  the  Teacher  whose 
authority  in  Galilee  revived  the  memory  of  the  great 
prophets  of  old,  as  he  set  his  own  message  in  bold 
opposition  to  what  “they  of  old  time”  had  said;  or 
because  of  the  thunderbolt  declarations  of  a  divinely 
inspired  gospel  which  the  great  Apostle  to  the  Gen¬ 
tiles  launched  against  those  who  wished  to  reimpose 
the  “handwriting  of  ordinances”  written  on  tables  of 
stone,  Christianity  has  never  quite  forgotten  the  lib¬ 
erty  wherewith  Christ  has  made  us  free. 

It  was  at  a  great  price  that  this  freedom  was  ob¬ 
tained.  The  bitterest  and  the  most  formidable  op¬ 
ponents  of  Jesus  had  been  the  scribes  and  their  blind 
followers,  the  Pharisees.  It  is  true  that  at  the  very 
end  Jesus’  appeal  to  Israel  took  on  a  more  political 
aspect.  His  act  of  prophetic  symbolism  in  reform¬ 
ing  abuses  in  the  temple  by  virtue  of  a  popular  sup¬ 
port  which  enabled  him  to  set  its  priestly  guardians 
temporarily  at  defiance  came  dangerously  near  the 
line  of  messianistic  insurrection.  But  Pilate  was 
loath  to  act.  Even  the  Sadducean  hierocracy  in 
Jerusalem  might  have  treated  him  as  leniently  as 
it  treated  Peter  and  John  shortly  after,  had  not  the 
religious  leaders  of  the  Synagogue  hounded  on  the 
hierocratic  and  secular  powers.  The  Synagogue,  and 


40  HE  OPENED  TO  US  THE  SCRIPTURES 


not  the  temple,  was  the  true  seat  of  conflict.  Jesus 
himself  fell  a  victim  to  fanatical  devotion  to  “the 
law  and  the  prophets”  in  their  literal  application 
rather  than  their  spiritual  elements.  For  it  was  Jesus’ 
uncompromising  insistence  upon  their  spiritual  con¬ 
tent  which  provoked  opposition.  They  who  sat 
in  Moses’  seat  as  official  expounders  of  the  meaning 
and  authority  of  sacred  Scripture  denounced  him  as 
working  in  collusion  with  Beelzebub.  Their  still 
more  ardent,  because  blinder,  devotees,  the  Pharisees, 
became  the  executioners  of  the  verdict,  conspiring 
with  the  courtiers  of  alien  and  heathen  powers  to 
destroy  his  life.  Bibliolatry  kindled  the  flame.  For 
scribe  and  Pharisee  alike  all  else  would  have  been 
tolerable  save  the  liberties  which  the  prophet  of 
Nazareth  had  taken  in  his  spiritual  application  of 
the  Law  and  the  Prophets.  Contemporary  Judaism 
was  built  on  the  traditional  (in  the  main  literal)  in¬ 
terpretation  of  these.  Whoever  took  a  broader  view, 
disregarding  the  tithing  of  mint  and  anise  and  cum¬ 
min  in  favor  of  judgment  and  mercy  and  “the 
weightier  matters  of  the  law,”  undermined  the  fun¬ 
damentals.  It  was  not  fit  that  such  a  fellow  should 
be  permitted  to  lead  the  people  astray.  Away  with 
him!  Crucify  him.  Crucify  him! 

Paul  was  forced  to  fight  the  same  battle  over 
again  with  “certain  of  the  Pharisees  who  had  be¬ 
lieved”  but  had  not  thoroughly  shaken  off  the  old 
Pharisean  yoke.  These  believers  of  Jewish  origin 
had  been  able  to  apply  the  principle  of  redemption 
through  the  blood  of  the  cross  just  so  far  as  it  had 


HOW  WRITERS  CONCEIVE  INSPIRATION  41 


been  already  carried.  They  were  glad  to  accept 
forgiveness  of  sin  “through  the  grace  of  the  Lord 
Jesus”  to  make  good  possible  deficiencies  in  their 
justification  “by  the  law  of  Moses,”  but  they  fell 
back  at  once  into  the  old  habit  of  dependence  on 
the  letter  of  the  written  commandment  the  instant 
the  times  called  for  a  wider  application  of  Jesus’ 
principle  of  freedom.  Thus  Paul  had  to  renew  the 
old  conflict  on  a  new  battle-ground.  Then,  as  now, 
advocates  of  the  doctrine  of  progressive  revelation 
found  themselves  still  opposed  by  those  who  regard 
it  as  something  static,  bits  “once  for  all  delivered” 
of  a  complete  mosaic  of  divine  truth,  which,  when 
ultimately  fitted  together,  will  reveal  the  pattern 
shown  in  the  Mount. 

As  far  back  as  we  can  trace  the  history  of  religious 
thought,  whether  in  Judaism  or  other  religions  of 
the  book,  this  opposition  of  the  static  and  the 
dynamic  view  of  divine  teaching  has  been  present 
in  principle,  and  in  our  own  day  there  is  no  indica¬ 
tion  of  its  becoming  less  pronounced.  On  the  whole, 
however,  the  candid  historian  must  admit  that  it 
was  the  Church,  rather  than  the  Synagogue,  which 
carried  forward  the  succession  of  the  dynamic  in¬ 
terpreters,  those  who  find  the  divine  teaching  of 
the  Scriptures  in  the  movement  of  the  Spirit,  in 
the  giving  way  progressively  of  conceptions  of  the 
more  outward  and  magical  type  to  such  as  afford 
fuller  expression  to  messages  of  moral  and  spiritual 
power.  The  Synagogue  has  been  more  largely  under 
control  of  those  who  think  of  divine  teaching  as 


42  HE  OPENED  TO  US  THE  SCRIPTURES 


given  sporadically  in  the  special  circumstances  of 
a  given  situation  and  environment.  Indeed,  after 
the  violent  breaking  away  of  the  Church  from  the 
Synagogue  in  consequence  of  the  work  of  Jesus  and 
Paul,  how  could  we  expect  it  to  be  otherwise  than 
that  the  forces  of  bibliolatry,  legalism,  and  literalism 
should  rally  to  the  Synagogue,  while  the  Church  (not 
indeed  wholly  free  from  these  same  deeply  rooted 
tendencies)  should  give  larger  opportunity  to  the 
doctrine  of  the  unceasing  guidance  of  a  living  Spirit, 
continually  reminding  us  of  the  things  of  Christ,  but 
also  leading  us  ever  onward  into  the  further  knowl¬ 
edge  of  the  truth. 

It  could  not  be  expected  that  the  primitive  Church 
would  distinctly  formulate  its  dynamic  conception 
of  inspiration  over  against  the  static.  Still  less  could 
it  be  expected  to  perfect  a  method  for  determining 
that  movement  of  the  revealing  Spirit  from  lower  to 
higher  ideas  of  God  which  the  dynamic  view  implies. 
Such  action  would  be  inconceivable  in  ages  which 
had  not  so  much  as  formed  the  idea  of  history  in 
the  modern  sense  of  the  word,  to  say  nothing  of 
applying  the  methods  of  critical  analysis  and  evalua¬ 
tion  which  the  modern  historian  applies  to  all  ancient 
records  as  well  as  to  contemporary  testimony.  Scrip¬ 
ture  itself  contains  in  principle  the  means  for  de¬ 
veloping  a  truly  Christian  evaluation.  What  in¬ 
spired  men  have  thought  of  their  own  message  and 
its  divine  authority,  and  what  they  have  thought  of 
the  messages  of  those  who  came  before  them,  pro¬ 
vides  a  basis  for  this  development.  But  to  define 


HOW  WRITERS  CONCEIVE  INSPIRATION  43 


this  Christian  doctrine  in  terms  acceptable  to  the 
theological  world  is  a  task  for  centuries.  Still  more 
must  that  art  be  slow  which  attempts  to  construct  a 
method  of  Scripture  interpretation.  When  the 
method  is  such  as  to  correspond  with  the  Christian 
idea,  distilling  forth  that  quintessence  of  religious 
and  moral  value  which  generations  have  sought  here 
(and  not  in  vain),  then  we  may  congratulate  our¬ 
selves  on  a  truly  great  achievement.  But  the  con¬ 
tribution  of  any  one  generation  to  this  result  must 
needs  be  small  as  compared  with  the  whole.  Only 
as  we  look  back  over  the  long  centuries  can  we  form 
some  estimate  of  the  outcome.  Some  great  principles 
fortunately  have  been  settled  once  for  all. 


CHAPTER  III 


PRIVATE”  INTERPRETATION  AND  INTER¬ 
PRETATION  APPROVABLE  BY  ALL 


CHAPTER  III 


“PRIVATE”  INTERPRETATION  AND  INTERPRE¬ 
TATION  APPROVABLE  BY  ALL 

In  our  day  no  interpretation  of  Scripture  could 
stand  which  did  not  at  least  make  the  claim  to  rep¬ 
resent  the  real  meaning  of  the  authors,  considered  as 
addressing  their  own  contemporaries.  Such  has  not 
always  been  the  case.  In  earlier  times  it  could  be 
maintained  that  Scripture  had  one  meaning  for  its 
writers  and  another  for  later  generations.1  It  was 
experience  of  the  boundless  error  and  confusion  in¬ 
troduced  through  the  door  thus  thrown  open  to  the 
fancy  of  any  and  every  self-appointed  interpreter 
that  compelled  the  Church  to  put  an  end  to  “private” 
interpretation.  The  only  alternative  was  interpre¬ 
tation  such  as  to  approve  itself  to  all,  and  general 
approbation  could  be  attained  by  no  other  means 
than  self-denial  in  the  natural  desire  to  have  a 
sacred  book  corresponding  to  one’s  own  conception 
of  what  it  ought  to  be.  It  is  no  small  temptation  to 
secure  divine  authority  for  the  doctrines  one  would 
like  to  see  prevail  by  interpreting  the  standards 
in  our  way  rather  than  the  authors’  way.  But 
standards  that  are  accepted  only  among  limited 
circles  are  proportionately  discredited.  Only  his- 


XI  Pt.  1:10-12. 


47 


48  HE  OPENED  TO  US  THE  SCRIPTURES 

torical  interpretation  can  hope  to  win  general  as¬ 
sent.  Scripture  must  be  made  approvable  to  all,  else 
it  affords  no  standard. 

Again,  it  was  not  enough  to  determine  among 
more  or  less  discordant  copies  of  the  transmitted 
text  which  manuscript  or  version,  or  what  combina¬ 
tion  of  manuscripts,  versions,  and  other  witnesses 
to  the  text,  most  nearly  approximated  to  the  orig¬ 
inal.1  It  was  not  enough  even  to  determine  by  study 
of  grammar  and  lexicon,  and  comparison  with  con¬ 
temporary  literature  and  history,  what  each  in¬ 
dividual  Scripture  writer  intended  as  his  own  mes¬ 
sage  to  his  age.  The  Bible  was  the  book  of  God, 
comprising  many  messages  for  successive  genera¬ 
tions,  and  for  the  world.  The  chief  need  was  to  ob¬ 
tain  God’s  message,  and  rightly  to  interpret  it. 
There  could  be  no  right  interpretation  of  that  mes¬ 
sage  which  was  petty  or  transient,  or  limited  in  time. 
After  textual  criticism  has  done  its  utmost  we  shall 
not  have  reached  the  kind  of  divine  book  the  advo¬ 
cate  of  verbal  infallibility  would  like  to  have.  After 
philologian,  grammarian,  and  archaeologist  have  done 
their  utmost  we  shall  have  no  more  than  the  best 
available  interpretation  of  what  the  individual 
Scripture  writers  contributed  to  the  religious  life 
of  their  times.  True  interpretation  of  the  canon  as 
a  whole  for  our  times  would  necessarily  involve  an 
answer  to  the  question :  What  does  the  whole  mani- 

1In  his  Prologue  addressed  to  Pope  Damasus  ( Nicene  and 
Post-Nicene  Fathers  VI)  Jerome  demands:  “If  we  are  to  pin 
our  faith  to  the  Latin  texts  it  is  for  our  opponents  to  tell  us 
which;  for  there  are  almost  as  many  forms  of  the  text  as  copies.” 


“PRIVATE”  INTERPRETATION 


49 


festation  mean  for  us?  What  is  God’s  message  to 
the  ages  in  the  formation,  transmission,  and  canon¬ 
ization  of  this  literature?  A  valid  answer  to  these 
questions  requires  study  of  the  history  of  religions 
and  of  religion,  study  of  the  psychology  of  religion, 
study  of  God  in  history.  A  “private”  interpretation 
of  this  divine  message  can  be  easily  obtained.  The 
limbo  of  theoretical  constructions  on  assumptions  of 
what  ought  to  be  is  full  of  them.  An  interpretation 
that  will  approve  itself  to  the  general  judgment  of 
thoughtful  and  conscientious  men  is  another  matter. 
But  at  least  there  is  general  acceptance  to-day  of 
“grammatico-historical”  interpretation  as  indis¬ 
pensable. 

History,  as  moderns  understand  the  term,  was  not 
even  attempted  before  the  eighteenth  century.  His¬ 
torical  criticism  in  its  various  departments  of  the 
authentication,  analysis,  and  evaluation  of  docu¬ 
ments  is  an  even  more  recent  development.  True, 
both  textual  and  higher  criticism  had  their  begin¬ 
nings  in  the  biblical  field.  It  is  from  students  of  the 
canonical  literature  that  secular  historians  have  had 
to  learn  the  greater  part  of  what  they  know  as  to 
critical  method.  For  there  were  wonderfully  scien¬ 
tific  applications  of  these  supposedly  modern  dis¬ 
ciplines  before  the  days  of  Eusebius.  But  the 
triumph  of  dogma  in  medieval  times  quenched  the 
light  of  criticism.  It  may  be  said  with  substantial 
truth  that  until  within  the  last  two  centuries  there 
was  no  science  of  grammatico-historical  interpreta¬ 
tion.  Jesus’  sense  and  Paul’s  sense  of  moral  and 


50  HE  OPENED  TO  US  THE  SCRIPTURES 

religious  value  as  the  divine  element  in  Scripture 
was  still  alive,  but  latent.  It  was  not  yet  possible 
for  the  Church  to  use  its  sacred  literature  in  a  way 
to  show  that  the  evolution  of  Christian  religious 
thought  stands  for  the  central  line  of  progress  in 
God’s  spiritual  creation. 

To-day  historico-critical  methods  exist,  and  are 
applied  by  common  consent  to  other  literatures. 
And,  as  in  all  previous  ages  of  the  Church,  there  are 
also  conservative  masses  who  regard  it  as  sacrilege 
that  the  holy  books  should  be  subjected  to  critical 
analysis.  Light  which  breaks  forth  from  the  Scrip¬ 
tures  through  such  openings  is  unwelcome.  This 
does  not,  and  from  the  nature  of  the  case  cannot, 
prevent  Christians  who  wish  to  know  how  the  re¬ 
vealing,  redeeming  Spirit  of  God  has  moved  in  the 
past  and  is  still  moving,  from  using  this  type  of 
study  and  research.  The  ancient  records  are  too  full 
of  meaning,  too  pregnant  with  new  light  and  new 
life  not  to  be  used  in  the  new  way.  Men  have  found 
and  are  finding  God  in  them,  a  living,  revealing,  re¬ 
deeming  God,  ever  building  new  temples  for  Him¬ 
self  in  the  hearts  of  men.  Wellsprings  of  living 
water  such  as  these  cannot  be  stopped  up,  nor  men 
kept  from  them  who  have  tasted  of  their  spiritual 
refreshment.  The  best,  the  most  scientific,  the  most 
searching  methods  available  will  continue  to  be  ap¬ 
plied  to  these  records  of  God’s  spiritual  creation, 
because  men  in  search  of  God  are  determined  to 
learn  more  and  more  of  the  evolution  of  spiritual  fife. 
The  Bible  cannot  suffer  from  any  method  of  real 


“PRIVATE”  INTERPRETATION 


51 


study,  any  more  than  the  sunbeam  suffers  when  the 
spectroscope  resolves  it  into  its  component  rays. 
But  the  Church  which  opposes  such  research  may 
suffer,  and  may  sorely  repent  the  day  when  it  in¬ 
sisted  on  placing  the  resources  of  science  in  the  hands 
of  its  enemies  only.  A  timid  clinging  to  the  past  on 
the  part  of  religious  conservatism  has  only  too  often 
produced  disastrous  results.  For  biblical  criticism 
can  be  turned  to  destructive,  rather  than  construc¬ 
tive,  aims.  It  can  be  made  a  weapon  against 
theories  of  sacred  Scripture  which  the  unthinking, 
both  inside  and  outside  the  Church,  conceive  to  be 
“fundamentals.”  But  the  greater  danger  is  neglect 
and  indifference  due  to  obscuration  of  fundamentals 
that  are  really  such. 

Those  who  give  themselves  to  the  study  of  the 
Scriptures  out  of  envy  and  strife  will  soon  tire  of 
slaying  the  slain.  They  need  not  be  feared.  Real 
biblical  criticism  is  a  delicate  process  of  patient, 
scientific  application.  Nothing  can  long  sustain  it 
save  faith  in  a  true  teaching  of  God  combined  with 
a  genuine  love  for  the  truth.  The  textual  and 
higher  critics  of  the  future  will  continue  more  and 
more  to  be  what  the  greatest  of  them  have  been  in 
the  past,  men  of  whom  it  could  be  said,  “The  zeal  of 
Thine  house  hath  eaten  me  up.”  They  will  be  God- 
intoxicated  men  who  listen  for  the  movement  of  His 
Spirit  across  the  ages  as  David’s  men  listened  for 
the  token  of  the  sound  of  marching  in  the  tops  of 
the  mulberry  trees.  The  Church  cannot  but  suffer 
that  attempts  to  cast  out  such. 


52  HE  OPENED  TO  US  THE  SCRIPTURES 


New  Testament  study  for  our  times  will  neces¬ 
sarily  employ  the  approved  philological,  historico- 
critical,  and  analytical  methods  of  modern  science. 
It  will  use  the  accumulated  resources  of  two  cen¬ 
turies  of  patient  application  to  the  restoration  of 
the  authentic  text,  and  the  equally  marvelous  ac¬ 
cumulation  of  archaeological,  lexical,  and  gram¬ 
matical  apparatus.  As  a  final  stage  in  the  enquiry, 
it  will  avail  itself  of  those  methods  of  research  into 
the  history  of  the  records  for  which  textual  and  lexi¬ 
cal  study  are  preliminary.  To  proceed  from  the 
known  toward  the  unknown  we  must  move  back¬ 
ward  in  time.  The  last  enquiry  concerns  the  his¬ 
tory  of  the  material  before  it  found  embodiment  in 
the  canonical  documents,  and  even  before  it  as¬ 
sumed  the  form  represented  in  the  biblical  writers, 
minds.  This  form  of  research,  because  it  is  ulterior 
to  textual,  has  received  the  name  “higher”  criti¬ 
cism.  These  methods  are  modern,  and  as  such  must 
expect  opposition  from  those  who  oppose  everything 
that  is  not  old.  But  neglect  to  apply  any  one  of 
them  would  be  worse  than  idleness  and  folly.  It 
would  be  disloyalty  to  the  truth,  refusal  to  accept 
the  Bible  as  its  own  interpreter,  rejection  of  the 
guidance  of  the  Spirit  of  Truth. 

But  the  innovation  will  be  far  less  than  men 
suppose.  Even  as  regards  the  methods  in  which  we 
take  highest  pride  as  scientific  achievements  of  the 
great  modem  age  of  historico-critical  enquiry,  we  are 
still  far  from  doing  justice  to  Christian  antiquity. 
The  work  of  Origen  as  a  textual  critic  will  bear  com- 


“PRIVATE”  INTERPRETATION 


53 


parison  with  that  of  the  greatest  textual  critics  of 
modern  times.  The  work  of  his  disciple  Dionysius 
in  demonstrating  that  the  Apocalypse  of  John  can¬ 
not  be  by  the  same  author  as  the  Gospel  ascribed  to 
this  Apostle  is  a  masterpiece  of  the  higher  criticism 
which  has  few  to  equal  it  in  our  day.  Indeed,  were 
it  not  for  the  researches  of  Eusebius  in  the  great 
library  of  Pamphilus  “to  show  what  ecclesiastical 
writers  have  from  time  to  time  made  use  of  any  of 
the  disputed  works  (read  in  some  of  the  churches), 
and  what  they  have  said  in  regard  to  the  canonical 
and  accepted  writings,  as  well  as  in  regard  to  those 
which  are  not  of  this  class/’  modern  critics  would 
confront  an  almost  impossible  task.  Eusebius  is  the 
very  leader  of  the  higher  critics  who  attempt  to  trace 
these  writings  to  their  historical  origin ;  and  Eusebius 
himself  followed  in  the  footsteps  of  those  second- 
century  fathers  who  sought  to  meet  Marcion’s 
charges  of  violation  of  the  records.  The  irony  of 
the  case  is  the  fact  that  those  very  traditions  of 
authorship  in  whose  defense  modern  criticism  is  de¬ 
nounced  are  themselves  the  product  of  ancient  criti¬ 
cism. 

Christian  scholars  are  not  now,  for  the  first  time, 
brought  face  to  face  with  the  issue  whether  the  Scrip¬ 
tures  shall  be  interpreted  historically,  as  products 
of  their  own  times,  or  as  magic  oracles  independent 
of  local  and  temporal  environment.  This  issue  was 
decided  in  the  early  centuries  of  the  Church,  when 
the  great  school  of  Alexandria,  heir  to  the  theological 
views  and  modes  of  interpretation  of  Philo,  advanced 


54  HE  OPENED  TO  US  THE  SCRIPTURES 


its  doctrine  of  allegorical  interpretation  against  the 
historico-critical  interpretation  of  the  great  teachers 
of  Antioch.  The  Jewish  doctrine  of  inspiration 
without  cooperation  on  the  part  of  the  prophet  or 
inspired  writer,  as  defined  by  Philo,  demands  as 
its  necessary  corollary  an  allegorical  method  of  in¬ 
terpretation.  Otherwise  the  divine  oracle  will  seem 
to  have  uttered  things  trifling  or  manifestly  con¬ 
futed  by  the  event.1  The  Alexandrian  fathers,  ac¬ 
cordingly,  beginning  with  Pseudo-Barnabas,  count 
it  a  merit  to  find  volumes  of  subtle  meaning  in 
expressions  which  on  the  surface  are  irrelevant. 
Barnabas  himself  relates  it  as  the  most  genuinely 
divine  utterance  which  any  man  has  ever  learned 
from  him,  that  the  number  of  servants  who  ac¬ 
companied  Abraham  in  rescuing  Lot  was  318,  be¬ 
cause  the  Greek  letters  T  I  H,  whose  numerical 
equivalents  are  300,  10  and  8,  make  up  respectively 
the  sign  of  the  cross,  and  the  first  and  second  letters 
of  the  name  of  Jesus.  Even  Clement  and  Origen  can 
indulge  in  occasional  allegorical  interpretations  which 
plunge  as  deeply  as  this  into  absurdity. 

A  consistent  doctrine  of  verbal  inspiration  finds 
some  sort  of  arbitrary  treatment  of  the  text  unavoid¬ 
able.  It  may  not  go  so  far  as  the  Alexandrian 
fathers;  but  if  it  meets  an  obvious  misstatement, 
such  as  Paul’s  reference  to  the  twenty-four  thousand 

1  So  Irenseus  on  the  deeper  meaning  of  Scripture  which  is  “spir¬ 
itual  throughout”  even  though  “all  prophecy,  till  its  accomplish¬ 
ment,  is  full  of  riddles  and  ambiguities  to  men”  ( Haer .  II,  xxviii. 
2,  3:  IV,  xxvi.  1). 


“PRIVATE”  INTERPRETATION 


55 


slain  of  Numbers  25:9  as  “three  and  twenty  thou¬ 
sand”  (I  Cor.  10:8)  it  feels  bound  for  the  honor  of 
God  to  change  the  text  in  one  passage  or  the  other. 
If  it  finds  Jesus  declaring  (Mt.  16:28) :  “There  are 
some  of  them  that  stand  here,  who  shall  in  no  wise 
taste  of  death  till  they  see  the  Son  of  Man  coming 
in  his  kingdom,”  or  Paul  that  “we  which  are  alive 
and  remain  unto  the  coming  of  the  Lord  shall  be 
caught  up  in  the  clouds  to  meet  the  Lord  in  the  air” 
(I  Thess.  4:15-17),  it  refuses  to  take  the  words  in 
the  sense  which  they  demonstrably  bore  to  the 
writers  and  their  contemporaries.  Standards  which 
can  thus  be  manipulated  by  the  users  cease  to  be 
standards.  The  dogmatist  can  thus  destroy  his  own 
footing.  When  he  does,  God  takes  a  text  and 
preaches  humility. 

The  fatal  objection  with  the  allegorical  and  all 
other  arbitrary  and  non-historical  methods  is  their 
uncontrollable  subjectivity.  Like  the  historical 
school  which  ultimately  replaced  it,  the  school  of 
allegorizing  interpretation  must  have  the  credit  of 
seeking  that  eternal  truth  that  through  all  the  ages 
continues  to  speak  in  the  listening  ear  of  conscience 
and  reason.  Subjective  types  of  interpretation  are 
rooted  in  the  sincere  desire  to  show  honor  to  God. 
But  they  have  no  historical  perspective.  Refusing 
to  take  anything  as  from  him  that  conscience  and 
reason  do  not  approve  in  their  own  time,  interpre¬ 
ters  of  this  type  end  by  substituting  for  the  record 
as  God’s  providence  has  transmitted  it  something 
else  of  their  own  manufacture.  Allegorizing  inter- 


56  HE  OPENED  TO  US  THE  SCRIPTURES 


pretation  really  puts  the  human  before  the  divine. 
It  was  found  in  practical  application  that  anything 
could  be  made  to  mean  anything  according  to  the 
fancy  of  the  interpreter.  There  was  no  divine  stand¬ 
ard  left,  because  every  man  twisted  it  to  mean  what 
he  pleased.  Thus  Alexandrian  allegorizing  broke 
down  of  its  own  weight.  The  Antiochian  principle 
of  historical  interpretation  remained  master  of  the 
field.  The  meaning  of  Scripture  must  be  regarded 
as  that,  and  only  that,  which  its  authors  meant  in 
addressing  their  own  contemporaries. 

Some  of  the  first-fruits  of  the  victory  of  truth  were 
the  great  commentaries  of  Theodore  of  Mopsuestia 
on  the  Psalms  and  the  Epistles  of  Paul,  still  a  source 
of  light  upon  the  meaning  down  to  our  own  times. 
What  if  the  literal  sense  be  confessedly  obsolete? 
Analogy  remains.  Application  of  Scripture  is  free 
but  unauthoritative.  Modem  teaching  cannot  cloak 
itself  with  trailing  clouds  of  glory  borrowed  from  the 
devotion  of  the  past.  But  it  has  better  appreciation 
of  the  past  than  the  Alexandrians,  and  is  content  to 
learn  from  it.  In  the  course  of  centuries  grammar, 
lexicon,  and  contemporary  history  and  literature 
have  become  a  bulwark  of  defense  against  distortion 
of  the  sense.  Subjectivism  is  not  indeed  extinct.  It 
will  continue  its  attempts  to  make  the  Bible  speak 
its  language  and  proclaim  its  favorite  conceits  as 
long  as  the  sacred  writers  enjoy  an  authority  capable 
of  exciting  the  cupidity  of  those  who  shrink  from  the 
arbitrament  of  reason  and  conscience.  But  the  walls 
of  scholarly  research  are  already  well  founded. 


“PRIVATE”  INTERPRETATION 


57 


Against  this  barrier  the  waves  of  interpretative 
fancy  will  henceforth  beat  in  vain. 

The  triumph  of  the  grammatico-historical  method 
of  Scripture  interpretation  over  every  type  of  ar¬ 
bitrary  dealing  with  text  or  meaning,  a  triumph  al¬ 
ready  won  in  principle  by  the  great  Antiochian  in¬ 
terpreters  of  the  fifth  century,  was  simply  another 
step  along  the  line  of  progress  marked  out  by  Jesus 
and  Paul.  It  is  quite  true,  as  Loisy  says  of  the 
Founder  of  our  faith  and  his  great  Apostle,  that  “it 
does  not  appear  that  in  their  teaching  they  desired 
to  make  any  innovation  so  far  as  the  extent  or 
authority  of  the  canon  of  their  times  are  concerned.” 
The  same  might  be  said  of  the  attitude  of  Jesus  and 
Paul  toward  current  eschatology,  or  the  institution 
of  slavery.  Nevertheless  they  sowed  the  seeds  of 
revolution.  The  “received  opinions”  and  the  tra¬ 
ditional  institutions  of  the  Jewish  and  of  the  Roman 
world  which  are  undermined  by  their  teachings  do 
not  crumble  away  because  of  “explicit  decisions  laid 
down  by  Jesus  Christ  and  the  Apostles,”  but  because 
the  fundamental  principles  on  which  Christ  and  the 
Apostles  teach  and  act  are  found  in  course  of  time 
to  be  incompatible  with  them.  How  soon  the 
rupture  will  come  no  man  can  foresee.  The  latent 
incompatibility  is  there.  The  discovery  of  it 
awaits  a  time  when  the  need  of  the  Church  shall 
cause  new  light  to  break  forth  from  the  ancient 
book. 

The  time  in  which  we  live  preeminently  feels  this 
need  of  new  light.  Conservatives  justly  demand  that 


58  HE  OPENED  TO  US  THE  SCRIPTURES 


criticism  shall  not  be  merely  negative,  but  shall  prove 
its  worth  to  the  multitude  by  making  the  Scriptures 
a  greater  source  of  spiritual  life  than  in  the  past. 
Liberals  should  be  well  content  to  have  it  so ;  for  after 
all  this  is  the  true  test.  Biblical  critics  apply  their 
scientific  methods  to  canonical  writings  rather  than 
in  some  other  field  just  because  religion  is  more  im¬ 
portant  to  them  than  politics  or  sociology.  The 
Bible  has  many  pearls  of  literature,  but  it  is  not 
esthetic  appreciation  of  their  beauty  as  works  of 
art  that  has  made  the  history  and  criticism  of 
Biblical  literature  a  life-study  for  generations  of  the 
keenest  minds.  It  is  their  relation  to  the  history 
of  religion.  We  have  appealed  to  reason  and  con¬ 
science.  But  in  the  widest  review  the  judgment  of 
the  Christian  world  will  decide  the  case  with  ref¬ 
erence  to  its  moral  and  religious,  not  its  intellectual 
or  esthetic  needs.  We  are  indeed  concerned  with 
“fundamentals”  in  our  time,  and  the  first  of  funda¬ 
mentals  is:  What  do  we  mean  by  “the  word  of 
God”?  If  there  is  a  difference  between  heathen  and 
Old  Testament  conceptions  on  this  point  it  is  time  it 
were  brought  out.  If  there  is  a  difference  between 
the  ideas  cherished  by  Jewish  writers,  scribes,  and 
Talmudists  of  New  Testament  times  and  the  ideas 
of  Jesus  and  Paul,  the  conditions  of  our  own  time 
make  it  incumbent  on  those  who  hold  this  view  to 
make  this  also  clear. 

On  the  one  side  we  are  told  that  there  was  no  such 
difference.  When  the  Jews  took  up  stones  to  stone 
Jesus  for  blasphemy  he  answered  (Jn.  10:34): 


“PRIVATE”  INTERPRETATION 


59 


Is  it  not  written  in  your  law,  “I  said,  Ye  are 
gods”  (Ps.  82:6)?  If  he  called  them  gods  unto 
whom  the  word  of  God  came  (i.e.,  judges,  who 
gave  decisions  as  from  “God,”  Ex.  21:6),  and  the 
Scripture  cannot  be  broken,  say  ye  of  him  whom 
the  Father  sanctified  and  sent  into  the  world, 
Thou  blasphemest;  because  I  said,  I  am  the  Son 
of  God? 

Here  the  parenthetic  reference  to  current  belief, 
“The  Scripture  cannot  be  broken,”  is  taken  by  some 
to  show  that  there  was  no  difference  between  Jesus' 
use  of  Scripture  and  that  of  those  who  wished  to 
stone  him  for  blasphemy. 

Again,  Jesus’  reference  to  the  story  of  Jonah  has 
been  held  up  as  an  official  settlement  of  the  ques¬ 
tion  whether  the  story  of  the  prophet  rescued  by 
the  great  fish  should  be  regarded  as  a  tale  with  a 
moral  or  as  conveying  historic  fact.  If  there  is  no 
difference  between  Jesus’  use  of  Scripture  and  that 
of  the  scribes  this  can  be  argued.  Or,  again,  it  has 
been  maintained  by  some  who  were  willing  to  ex¬ 
pose  to  shipwreck  the  simple  faith  of  believers  on 
a  question  of  historical  and  literary  criticism,  that 
Jesus’  acquiescence  in  current  opinion  regarding 
the  authorship  of  the  Psalms  imposes  a  peremptory 
veto  upon  consideration  of  the  question  whether 
Psalm  110  (which  he  quotes  as  an  utterance  of 
David  “in  the  Spirit”)  may  not  be,  as  the  acrostic 
of  its  opening  lines  suggests,  the  coronation  ode  of 
“Simon”  the  Maccabee,  corresponding  to  the  oc¬ 
casion  depicted  in  I  Maccabees  14:25-49.  If  there 


60  HE  OPENED  TO  US  THE  SCRIPTURES 


is  no  difference  between  Jesus’  use  of  Scripture  and 
contemporary  Jewish  use  the  Church  must  take  the 
risk  that  the  decision  on  this  question  of  pure  lit¬ 
erary  criticism  will  turn  against  her,  to  the  collapse 
of  all  her  authority. 

On  the  other  hand,  there  are  not  a  few  who  see 
a  difference,  and  who  not  only  recognize  that  Jesus' 
teaching  from  the  Scriptures  was  “not  as  the  scribes,” 
but  have  taken  at  least  some  steps  toward  defining 
the  nature  of  this  difference  and  showing  on  what 
it  rests.  Thus,  Glover  notes  in  his  Conflict  of  Re¬ 
ligions  in  the  Early  Roman  Empire  (p.  126) : 

In  all  his  (Jesus’)  quotations  of  the  Old  Tes¬ 
tament  that  have  reached  us  there  is  no  trace  of 
servitude  to  the  letter  and  no  hint  of  allegory. 
He  does  not  quote  Scripture  as  his  followers  did. 
Here,  too,  he  spoke  as  having  authority.  If  some¬ 
times  he  quoted  words  for  their  own  sake  it  was 
always  as  an  argumentum  ad  hominem.  But  his 
own  way  was  to  grasp  the  writer’s  mind — a  very 
difficult  thing  in  his  day,  and  little  done — and 
to  go  straight  to  the  root  of  the  matter,  regardless 
of  authority  and  tradition. 

Similar  testimony  is  borne  by  Wendt  in  his  Teach¬ 
ing  of  Jesus,  and  many  others  of  less  authority.  As 
Glover  justly  notes,  Jesus’  superiority  is  not  that 
of  the  scientist  or  critical  historian,  but  that  of 
the  prophet  and  true  religious  seer.  “His  freedom 
in  dealing  with  the  prophets  came  from  his  inner 
sympathy  with  the  prophetic  mind.  He  read,  and 
understood,  and  decided  for  himself.” 


“PRIVATE”  INTERPRETATION 


61 


It  was  indeed  nothing  else  save  Jesus’  unerring  in¬ 
stinct  for  religious  and  moral  values,  the  true  in¬ 
stinct  of  the  prophet,  that  led  him  to  the  heart  of 
the  Old  Testament,  to  the  disregard  of  books  such 
as  the  Song  of  Songs,  which  Akibah  a  century  later 
by  means  of  allegorizing  and  forced  interpretation 
could  declare  to  be  “the  holy  of  holies”  of  Scripture. 

The  same  sense  of  religious  values  led  Jesus  to 
new  applications  glorifying  the  prophecies  of  Isaiah 
and  Malachi.  He  treated  the  Scriptures  neither  as 
critic  nor  as  theologian.  He  volunteered  no  authori¬ 
tative  verdict  in  the  current  debate  as  to  whether 
Ecclesiastes  does  or  does  not  “defile  the  hands.” 
Neither  does  he  pronounce  upon  the  authorship  of 
the  Pentateuch  or  the  historicity  of  Jonah.  But  his 
mode  of  treatment  of  both  books  is  instructive.  He 
compares  the  summons  to  repent  God  sent  to  the 
Ninevites  through  Jonah  with  the  unheeded  sum¬ 
mons  God  had  sent  to  “this  generation”  through 
John.1  If  his  hearers  were  not  “pricked  in  their 
hearts,”  it  was  not  for  lack  of  searching  application 
of  the  parallel.  He  also  manifests  his  disdain  for 
the  selfish,  Epicurean  philosophy  of  the  “Solomon” 
of  Ecclesiastes  by  his  parable  of  the  rich  man  whom 
God  called  a  “fool”  because  he  heaped  up  riches 
knowing  not  who  should  gather  them.  He  followed 
up  this  parable  with  the  wonderful  discourse  on  the 
theme,  “A  man’s  life  consisteth  not  in  the  abundance 

1  On  John  (not  Jesus)  as  the  “greater  matter  than  Jonah”  see 
below,  p.  80,  and  Bacon,  Sermon  on  the  Mount ,  Macmillan,  1902, 
p.  232. 


62  HE  OPENED  TO  US  THE  SCRIPTURES 


of  his  possessions,”  showing  how  God  provides  for 
the  ravens  which  have  neither  store-chamber  nor 
barn,  and  clothes  the  lilies  of  the  field  more  richly 
than  “Solomon  in  all  his  glory”  (Lk.  12:13-31). 
That  was  more  than  a  historical  criticism  of  Ec- 
celesiastes.  It  was  a  new  way  of  using  Scripture 
unlike  that  of  the  scribes. 

How  trifling  is  the  question  of  the  pedigree  of  the 
Messiah  with  which  the  scribes  concern  themselves, 
as  compared  with  the  authority  which  God  actually 
confers  upon  his  representative  by  exalting  him  to 
sit  at  the  right  hand  of  power!  As  we  have  seen, 
Jesus  appeals  to  a  Psalm  currently  ascribed  to  David. 
That  is  an  authority  which  his  opponents,  the 
scribes,  will  not  deny.  Let  us  suppose  that  the 
acrostic  letters  which  spell  the  name  “Simon”  by 
means  of  the  beginnings  of  its  principal  fines  prove 
it  to  be  (as  leading  critics  maintain)  not  a  com¬ 
position  of  David,  but  the  ode  of  some  inspired 
poet  from  the  great  days  of  the  Maccabees,  when 
freedom  to  worship  God  had  been  won,  the  sanctuary 
restored,  and  a  grateful  people  tendered  the  joint  of¬ 
fice  of  high  priest  and  king  to  Simon,  survivor  of 
the  group  of  heroic  sons  of  Mattathias.  The  story 
is  told  in  I  Maccabees  14:25-49  how  his  people  made 
themselves  a  “freewill  offering”  in  the  day  of  his 
power,  making  him  both  high  priest  and  “prince  of 
the  people  of  God,”  although  he  was  by  descent 
neither  of  the  house  of  Zadok  nor  of  the  house  of 
David,  and  inscribing  their  action  for  perpetuity  on 
tablets  of  bronze  set  up  in  the  temple.  Let  us  sup- 


“PRIVATE”  INTERPRETATION 


63 


pose  that  this  psalm,  which  plays  so  great  a  part  in 
the  thought  of  New  Testament  writers,  was  not,  as 
they  imagine,  written  by  David,  but  expresses  the 
messianic  hope  of  those  who  offered  the  double 
crown  of  priest  and  king  to  him  whom  they  looked 
upon  as  the  savior  of  God’s  people.  Does  Jesus’ 
comparison  of  this  loftier  messianic  ideal  with  the 
scribal  insistence  on  literal  Davidic  descent  suffer 
serious  detriment  from  the  mere  fact  that  both  part¬ 
ies  are  in  error  as  to  the  date  and  authorship  of 
the  Scripture  adduced?  Whether  it  be  Jesus  himself, 
or  disciples  who  after  his  death  and  exaltation  as 
Son  of  Man  to  “the  right  hand  of  God,”  place  this 
utterance  on  his  lips  over  against  scribal  insistence 
on  the  letter,  the  true  point  at  issue  is  the  higher 
as  against  the  lower  messianic  ideal.  And  the  higher 
ideal  is  that  of  the  Maccabean  poet,  not  that  of  the 
scribes;  albeit  even  the  psalmist’s  ideal  itself  falls 
far  below  the  Christian. 

Such  use  of  Scripture  as  this  proves  nothing  with 
regard  to  questions  of  authorship  or  canonicity  save 
that  Jesus  (like  his  contemporaries)  assumed  that 
the  Psalms  in  general  were  David’s.  It  proves  a 
great  deal  as  regards  insight  into  the  religious  values 
of  Scripture.  For  either  Jesus,  or  those  who  ascribe 
to  him  this  utterance,1  used  it  to  lift  the  whole  con¬ 
ception  of  Messiahship  to  a  higher  level.  The  use 
of  Scripture  here  is  uncritical,  but  directed  by  a 
sense  of  moral  and  religious  values.  Jesus  does  not 

1  See  Bacon,  Beginnings  of  Gospel  Story,  p.  175,  on  the  question 
of  authenticity. 


64  HE  OPENED  TO  US  THE  SCRIPTURES 


make  authoritative  pronouncements  on  questions  of 
literary  criticism.  He  supplies  a  more  vital  and  ef¬ 
fective  factor.  He  sets  practical  examples  of  moral 
and  religious  application,  and  this  in  the  end  leads 
to  the  displacement  of  rabbinic  theories  of  Scripture 
by  such  as  better  deserve  to  be  called  Christian. 

The  Bible  is  thus  truly  its  own  “best  interpreter.” 
There  are  no  other  correctives  of  unworthy,  magical, 
or  outworn  doctrines  of  inspiration  and  revelation 
half  so  cogent  as  those  the  Scriptures  themselves 
supply  through  the  long  ages  of  struggle  for  the 
higher  against  the  lower,  the  spirit  as  against  the 
letter,  which  are  covered  by  its  record.  It  is  the 
movement  which  counts,  not  the  position  at  any 
given  stage.  The  line  of  direction  and  the  forward 
impulse — by  these  the  Scriptures  furnish  us  with  the 
help  that  is  from  God.  The  token  of  the  sound  of 
marching  in  the  tops  of  the  mulberry  trees  was  not 
given  to  David’s  men  to  point  out  for  them  a  safe 
camping  ground,  but  to  prove  that  “Jehovah  is  gone 
out  before  you  to  smite  the  host  of  the  Philistines.” 

New  Testament  study  for  our  times  involves, 
therefore,  complete  loyalty  to  grammatico-historical 
interpretation  as  the  only  known  safeguard  against 
abuse  of  the  authority  of  Scripture  in  the  interest 
of  “private  interpretation.”  Immense  strides  have 
been  made  since  Reformation  times  in  the  direction 
of  such  impartial  objectivity,  whether  as  regards  re¬ 
moval  of  corruptions  from  the  text,  establishment 
of  linguistic  usage,  or  historical  situation  to  which 
the  writings  were  addressed  by  their  authors.  Dis- 


“PRIVATE”  INTERPRETATION  65 

loyalty  to  these  would  be  nothing  less  than  treason 
to  the  Bible. 

But  if  the  use  of  Scripture  by  Jesus  and  Paul  so 
“transcends  current  rabbinical  methods”  that  we  are 
entitled  to  speak  of  a  Christian  doctrine  of  sacred 
Scripture  in  distinction  from  pagan  or  Jewish,  then 
defense  of  the  methods  of  grammatico-historical 
interpretation  is  but  the  lesser  part  of  our  task. 
The  immediate  exigency  of  the  times  may  compel  us 
to  hold  in  check  the  misguided  efforts  of  reaction  by 
the  reminder  that  never  once  in  all  the  long  history 
of  the  progress  of  truth  has  it  begun  with  the  ma¬ 
jority,  but  always  against  it.  Even  numerical  ma¬ 
jorities  have  no  right  to  impose  dogmatic  limits  on 
the  freedom  of  enquiry  of  those  whom  Christ  calls 
“my  brother,  my  sister,  and  my  mother,”  because 
they  truly  seek  to  “do  the  will  of  his  Father.”  Any 
such  attempt  would  be  the  expression  not  of  de¬ 
mocracy  but  of  demagogy  in  the  Church.  It  would 
differ  in  no  essential  respect  from  the  effort  of  those 
“Pharisees  who  had  believed,”  whom  Paul  resisted, 
bidding  the  Galatians,  “Stand  fast  in  the  liberty 
wherewith  Christ  hath  made  you  free.” 

The  “yoke  of  bondage”  against  which  Paul 
warned  was  an  interpretation  of  Scripture  according 
to  “the  letter  that  killeth,”  instead  of  “the  Spirit 
which  giveth  life.”  Doubtless  we  have  a  duty  to 
that  ever  advancing  Spirit,  which  leads  successive 
generations  of  believers  forward  into  the  fuller  un¬ 
derstanding  of  Christ,  causing,  for  each,  “new  light 
to  break  forth  from  the  Scriptures.”  It  is  a  duty 


66  HE  OPENED  TO  US  THE  SCRIPTURES 


to  defend  the  use  of  every  scientific  method  made 
available  to  the  progressive  Bible  student  by  the 
advance  of  scholarship,  culture  and  enlightenment. 
For  beyond  all  else  that  science  can  supply,  the  Spirit 
has  need  of  these  things.  But  this  is  but  the  lesser 
part  of  the  task.  Mere  defense  of  the  right  to  build 
is  not  building.  The  Christian  student  of  Scripture 
in  our  time  needs  to  take  from  the  example  of 
Jesus  and  Paul  something  higher  than  critical 
method,  something  greater  than  history  and 
archaeology.  We  need  to  take  that  sense  of  moral 
and  religious  values  which  enabled  them,  in  spite  of 
scientific  limitations  which  they  shared  with  the 
Synagogue  of  their  time,  “to  penetrate  more  deeply 
to  the  heart  of  the  Old  Testament  teaching.” 


CHAPTER  IV 


THE  EXAMPLE  OF  JESUS  AND  PAUL 


CHAPTER  IV 


THE  EXAMPLE  OF  JESUS  AND  PAUL 

Nothing  is  more  certain  about  the  career  of  Jesus 
than  that  he  perished  a  martyr  to  a  more  living, 
free,  and  progressive  interpretation  of  the  Scriptures, 
a  victim  to  the  conservatives  of  temple  and  Syna¬ 
gogue,  both  of  whom  built  upon  the  inspired  author¬ 
ity  of  Moses,  though  bitterly  at  odds  among  them¬ 
selves.  Few  will  deny  that  Jesus  also  rested  upon 
the  inspired  authority  of  the  past.  The  conditions 
of  the  time  would  have  imposed  it  quite  apart  from 
his  inclination.  But  his  use  was  “not  as  the  scribes.” 

The  conservatives  of  the  conservatives  in  Jesus’ 
time  were  the  sons  of  Zadok,  the  Sadducees,  masters 
of  the  temple  and  its  ritual,  holding  to  their  priestly 
revenues  and  power  by  virtue  of  the  Pentateuchal 
law.  The  Law  of  Moses  made  them  powerful  and 
rich.  It  gave  them  control  over  the  temple,  the 
strongest  fortress  and  the  richest  bank  in  Syria ;  nat¬ 
urally  they  resented  an  attempt  on  the  part  of  the 
Galilean  Prophet  to  restore  it  to  the  religious  ideal 
long  before  proclaimed,  that  it  should  be  “a  house 
of  prayer  for  all  nations.”  The  Sadducean  priesthood 
and  their  corruptions  and  worldliness  perished  with 

it.  When  the  temple  that  “the  hissing  brood  of 

69 


70  HE  OPENED  TO  US  THE  SCRIPTURES 


Annas”  had  made  a  den  of  robbers  was  destroyed 
forever  by  the  Roman  torch,  there  were  few  to 
mourn  the  fate  of  the  Sadducees.  The  generation 
which  witnessed  its  destruction,  Christian  and 
Jewish  alike,  has  nothing  for  them  but  hatred  and 
contempt.  They  are  not  remembered  as  the  priestly 
nobility,  descendents  of  the  Maccabbean  heroes  who 
restored  the  temple  along  with  national  independence 
and  founded  a  dynasty  of  priest-kings  in  Jerusalem 
“after  the  order  of  Melchizedek.”  By  New  Testa¬ 
ment  writers  and  rabbis  alike  they  are  remembered 
simply  for  their  rejection  of  the  newer  doctrine  of 
the  times,  the  doctrine  of  resurrection  and  a  world 
to  come,  brought  in  by  the  Pharisees.  To  the  later 
times  the  Sadducees  are  simply  the  Jewish  sect  which 
“deny  the  resurrection,  holding  that  there  is  neither 
angel  nor  spirit.” 

In  Jesus’  time  the  hierocratic  nobility,  the  temple 
orthodoxy,  had  become  the  strict  constructionists  of 
Mosaism,  allowing  no  innovation,  but  clinging  to  the 
old  nationalistic  and  political  messianic  hope.  With 
the  downfall  of  the  temple,  the  Synagogue  denounced 
the  Sadducean  unbelievers  as  heretics.  In  like 
manner  second-century  Christianity  condemned  as 
heresy  the  Ebionism  of  the  Palestinian  churches 
which,  rejecting  Paul,  had  maintained  strict 
Mosaism  and  a  Davidic  rule  in  the  family  of  Jesus. 
The  conservatives  of  one  generation  become  the 
heretics  of  the  next.  The  conservatives  of  the  temple 
hierocracy  were  doomed  to  this  fate. 

The  conservatives  of  the  Synagogue  in  New  Tes- 


THE  EXAMPLE  OF  JESUS  AND  PAUL  71 


t  ament  times  were  the  scribes,  official  expounders  of 
the  Torah,  supported  by  their  docile  followers  the 
Pharisees,  devotees  pledged  to  blind  obedience  in 
hope  of  divine  intervention  and  a  “share  in  the  world 
to  come/’  This  is  Judaism  substantially  as  we  know 
it;  for  after  the  disappearance  of  the  temple  and  its 
guardians,  the  Sadducees,  nothing  stood  in  the  way 
of  the  scribes  as  rebuilders  of  the  hope  of  Israel. 
Henceforth  Judaism  was  to  be  a  religion  under  the 
exclusive  leadership  of  the  Synagogue.  Indeed, 
even  in  Jesus’  time  real  influence  with  the  people 
had  already  passed  from  temple  to  Synagogue. 
Jesus  never  so  much  as  came  in  contact  with  the 
Sadducees  until  he  attempted  his  reform  in  the  tem¬ 
ple.  Then  the  priests  acted.  They  became  the  im¬ 
mediate  instruments  of  Jesus’  death.  But  the 
real  conspirators  were  the  scribes,  hand  in  hand  with 
their  tools,  the  Pharisees.  Whether  for  their  re¬ 
ligion’s  sake  or  their  own,  the  scribes  were  intensely 
jealous  of  Jesus’  popular  following.  To  them  his 
gospel  was  “blasphemy,”  his  works  of  healing  were 
due  to  collusion  with  Beelzebub.  To  the  Pharisees, 
Jesus  was  a  contemner  of  the  Law,  an  associate  of 
loose  livers  and  apostates.  Some  appreciation  of  the 
two  types  of  conservatism  in  Jesus’  day,  the  con¬ 
servatives  of  the  temple  and  the  conservatives  of  the 
Synagogue,  and  the  dependence  of  both  on  biblical 
authority,  is  required  before  we  can  fully  answer  the 
question :  How  does  Jesus’  conception  of  the  author¬ 
ity  of  Scripture  differ  from  theirs? 

Since  the  generation  which  has  given  us  the  Gos- 


72  HE  OPENED  TO  US  THE  SCRIPTURES 


pels  took  no  interest  in  Sadducean  party  principles 
it  is  natural  that  we  should  have  but  one  record 
of  any  encounter  of  Jesus  with  the  Sadducees  on  doc¬ 
trinal  grounds.  Indeed,  the  Sadducees  had  no  spe¬ 
cific  doctrine,  save  to  cling  to  the  letter  of  the  Torah, 
resisting  and  ridiculing  the  new-school  teaching  of  a 
life  to  come.  For  this  doctrine  championed  by  the 
Pharisees  required  very  elastic  application  of  the 
writings  of  Moses  to  bring  it  under  the  cover  of 
his  authority.  But  Jesus,  like  Paul  (Acts  23:6),  is 
a  Pharisee  on  this  issue.  He  makes  this  elastic  ap¬ 
plication,  using  the  Scripture  with  extraordinary  dis¬ 
regard  of  the  letter  and  equally  remarkable  penetra¬ 
tion  to  the  spirit.  The  instance  is  an  example  well 
worthy  of  study.  It  offers  a  clew  to  what  Jesus 
meant  by  “knowing  the  Scriptures.”  But  we  are 
now  concerned  with  his  direct  rebuke  of  the  whole 
attitude  of  the  Sadducean  party,  in  particular  for 
their  treatment  of  Scripture  itself,  because  they  fail 
to  penetrate  to  its  really  vital  teaching  and  use  it 
merely  to  support  their  own  place  and  power. 
“Jesus  said  unto  them,  Is  it  not  for  this  cause  that 
ye  err,  that  ye  know  not  the  Scriptures,  nor  the 
power  of  God?”  They  were  rooted  to  a  dead  past, 
from  which  they  might  have  been  delivered  had  they 
really  used  the  Scriptures  on  which  they  professed 
to  stand.  But  no;  in  reality  they  “knew  not  the 
Scriptures.”  For  this  reason  they  also  lacked  belief 
in  a  living  God,  whose  working  is  not  confined  to 
the  narrow  limits  of  what  they  of  old  time  may  have 
thought  or  said. 


THE  EXAMPLE  OF  JESUS  AND  PAUL  73 


For  once  Jesus*  sympathies  were  with  the  scribes 
and  Pharisees.  For  on  one  issue  at  least  the  Phari¬ 
sees  themselves  stood  against  the  ultra-conservatives 
of  the  temple,  the  Sadducees,  whose  hope  was  for 
this  world,  and  this  world  only.  It  was  a  question 
of  the  interpretation  of  Scripture  (this  could  not 
fail  to  be  the  case  under  the  conditions  of  the  time) , 
and  Jesus  justified  the  Pharisees  in  their  bold 
innovation. 

The  new  doctrine  of  the  Pharisees  really  ef¬ 
fected  a  far-reaching  transformation  in  the  national 
religion  by  introducing  the  principle  of  “other¬ 
worldliness.”  In  the  reign  of  John  Hyrcanus  I 
(135-105  b.c.)  the  increasingly  worldly  ambitions 
of  the  later  Maccabees  brought  about  a  reaction  on 
the  part  of  the  Chasidim,  the  devout  patriots  who 
had  fought  only  for  freedom  to  worship  Jehovah  and 
who  took  small  interest  in  the  political  intrigues 
and  nationalistic  aspirations  of  the  court  party. 
When  it  came  to  the  point  of  sacrificing  the  blood 
and  treasure  of  the  people  for  the  aggrandizement  of 
the  dynasty  there  came  open  rupture  and  civil  war. 
Alexander  (104-78  b.c.)  suppressed  a  bloody  revolt 
led  by  the  Pharisees  and  greatly  extended  his  do¬ 
minions  by  conquest.  But  his  widow,  Alexandra 
(78-69  b.c)  reversed  his  policy.  In  the  words  of 
Josephus  “she  had  the  name  of  regent,  but  the  Phari¬ 
sees  had  the  authority.”  They  used  it  to  make  Ju¬ 
daism  a  religious  rather  than  a  political  power. 

With  the  triumph  of  Pharisaism  under  Alexandra 
the  hope  of  Israel  had  practically  ceased  to  be  a 


74  HE  OPENED  TO  US  THE  SCRIPTURES 


kingdom  of  this  world.  The  Apocalyptic  writers, 
beginning  with  Daniel,  had  transferred  the  scene  of 
conflict  to  the  heavenly  places.  The  Pharisees  had 
made  deliverance  a  hope  for  “the  world  to  come.” 
All  save  Sadducees  and  Zealots  looked  for  a  divine 
intervention  which  waited  only  on  Israel’s  obedience 
to  the  Law.  Thus  the  whole  center  of  gravity  of 
religion  had  been  transferred  from  earth  to  heaven. 
For  Mosaism  is  a  religion  so  preeminently  national¬ 
istic  and  of  this  world  that  Bishop  Warburton  in 
the  once-famous  apology,  The  Divine  Legation  of 
Moses ,  could  argue  for  its  superhuman  origin  by 
virtue  of  its  contrast  with  contemporary  religions 
in  just  this  respect,  that  it  ignores  the  doctrine  of 
immortality.  Being  such,  how  could  Mosaism  be 
adjusted  to  this  revolutionary  transformation? 
How  could  it  learn  to  set  its  affection  on  things 
above,  not  on  things  on  the  earth,  without  a  latitude 
of  interpretation  of  the  law  and  the  prophets  at  least 
as  great  as  anything  demanded  in  modern  times? 

Pharisaism  in  its  golden  days  had  been  equal  to 
this  reconstruction  of  religion.  The  figures  of  speech 
of  Ezekiel  and  Isaiah,  in  which  the  restoration  of 
Israel  after  extinction  of  its  national  life  had  been 
compared  to  raising  up  from  Sheol,  a  renewal  of  the 
first  redemption  out  of  the  Egyptian  “house  of  bond¬ 
age,”  were  taken  in  the  literal  sense.  They  were 
given  a  new  application  to  deliverance  from  the 
darkness  and  the  shadow  of  death,  from  earthly 
misery  into  the  freedom  and  glory  of  “the  world 
to  come.”  The  religion  of  the  Synagogue  in  Jesus’ 


THE  EXAMPLE  OF  JESUS  AND  PAUL  75 


time  expressed  this  (and  still  expresses  it)  in  the 
ancient  prayer  called  the  Shemoneh  Esreh.  He  who 
reads  it  will  see  at  once  what  Jesus  means  when  he 
rebukes  the  Sadducees  because  they  know  neither 
the  Scriptures  (whose  essential  meaning  is  that  the 
living  God  made  this  people  his  own  by  covenant 
with  the  patriarchs),  nor  “the  power  of  God/’  who 
in  his  own  way  is  “faithful”  to  his  covenant,  even 
to  the  “quickening  of  the  dead.” 

i.  Blessed  art  thou,  God  of  Abraham,  Isaac  and 
Jacob,  great,  mighty  and  tremendous,  bestower 
of  gracious  favor  and  creator  of  all  things,  who  re- 
memberest  the  piety  of  the  patriarchs  and  wilt 
bring  a  Redeemer  to  their  posterity  for  the  sake 
of  thy  Name  in  love.  O  King,  who  bringest 
help  and  healing  and  art  a  Shield.  (Refrain?) 
Blessed  art  thou,  0  Lord,  the  Shield  of  Abraham. 

ii.  Thou  are  mighty  forever,  0  Lord;  thou  re- 
storest  life  to  the  dead.  Thou  are  mighty  to  save ; 
who  sustainest  the  living  with  beneficence,  quick- 
enest  the  dead  with  great  mercy,  supporting  the 
fallen  and  healing  the  sick  and  setting  at  liberty 
those  who  are  bound,  upholding  thy  faithfulness 
to  those  who  sleep  in  the  dust.  Who  is  like  unto 
thee,  0  Lord,  the  Almighty?  Or  who  can  be  com¬ 
pared  unto  thee  0  King,  who  killest  and  makest 
alive  again,  and  causest  help  to  spring  forth? 
Faithful  art  thou  to  quicken  the  dead.  (Re¬ 
frain?)  Blessed  art  thou,  0  Lord,  who  restorest 
the  dead. 

Here  is  an  instance  in  which  even  pre-Christian 
Jews  in  the  fire  of  a  supreme  crisis  of  their  religion 
had  “transcended  current  rabbinical  methods  in  a 


76  HE  OPENED  TO  US  THE  SCRIPTURES 


manner  to  penetrate  more  deeply  to  the  heart  of  Old 
Testament  teaching.”  Indeed,  they  might  be  said 
to  have  passed  quite  beyond  it ;  for  as  a  mere  matter 
of  historical  interpretation  the  Sadducees  were 
nearer  the  truth  than  they.  The  Pharisees  had  been 
driven  by  force  of  national  catastrophe  to  indulge  a 
larger  hope.  Not  by  Platonic  argument,  not  by  def¬ 
inite  enunciation  of  the  scientific  principle  of  histor¬ 
ical  interpretation,  but  by  sheer  force  of  religious 
insight  they  disregarded  the  letter  of  Law  and 
Prophets  to  seize  upon  the  heart  of  the  teaching, 
the  hope  of  a  world  to  come.  In  this  radical  depar¬ 
ture  they  have  the  sympathy  of  Jesus.  The  resis¬ 
tance  of  the  Sadducees  does  not,  to  him,  prove  their 
greater  faithfulness  to  Moses.  It  proves  only  their 
ignorance  of  the  real  message  of  the  Scriptures,  and 
their  lack  of  faith  in  the  power  of  the  living,  cov¬ 
enant-keeping  God.  Jesus’  warrant  for  his  interpre¬ 
tation  is  neither  grammar  nor  history,  but  simple 
faith  in  the  living  God. 

But  contemporary  scribes  and  Pharisees  had  not 
maintained  this  freedom  of  the  earlier  time.  There 
were  indeed  teachers  such  as  Hillel  even  in  Jesus’ 
day  who  could  declare:  “What  thou  wouldest  not 
that  another  should  do  to  thee  do  not  to  him;  this 
is  the  Torah,  the  rest  is  commentary”;  and  there 
were  those  who  could  say  in  the  spirit  of  an  Isaiah : 
“The  Sabbath  was  made  for  man,  not  man  for  the 
Sabbath.”  1  But  the  general  tendency  was  toward 

1  Mk.  2:27  a  text.  The  saying  fails  to  appear  in  the  p  text 
and  is  absent  from  both  Matthew  and  Luke.  D  inserts  it  after 


THE  EXAMPLE  OF  JESUS  AND  PAUL  77 


legalism  and  biblicism.  Disregard  of  the  appointed 
weekly  fasts  in  order  to  make  fasting  a  real  expres¬ 
sion  to  the  Father  that  seeth  in  secret  of  heartfelt 
sorrow  and  contrition  was  in  their  eyes  to  be  a 
“glutton  and  a  wine-bibber.”  Disregard  of  the 
minutiae  of  Sabbath  observance,  even  on  grounds 
recognized  by  the  broader-minded  of  the  rabbis 
themselves  (“danger  to  life  dispels  the  Sabbath”), 
had  become  among  the  Pharisees  of  Jesus’  time  rea¬ 
son  sufficient  for  them  to  plot  with  the  Herodians 
against  his  life.  Then  Jesus  again  proves  how  he 
can  “penetrate  to  the  heart  of  Old  Testament  teach¬ 
ing.”  In  the  example  of  David  and  his  men  eating 
the  shew-bread  taken  from  the  altar  he  silences  the 
,  pettifogging  complaint  against  his  disciples,  and 
when  his  own  healings  are  impugned,  turns  indig¬ 
nantly  on  the  conspirators  with  the  question:  “Is 
it  lawful  to  do  good  on  the  Sabbath  or  to  do  evil; 
to  save  life,  or  to  kill?”  Is  it  they,  or  he,  who  reflect 
the  true  spirit  of  Moses’  commandment:  “These 
things  do  that  thou  mayest  live?” 

Is  it  that  Jesus  had  anticipated  the  discoveries  of 
the  Graf-Kuenen-Wellhausen  criticism;  is  it  be¬ 
cause  he  understood  the  discrepancies  of  the  national 
religion  as  presented  in  the  period  of  the  prophets 
with  that  of  the  post-exilic  Priestly  Law-book,  that 

Lk.  6:10.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  a  typical  utterance  of  the 
liberal  school  of  Pharisaism,  quoted  in  Joma  85  and  Mechilta  on 
Ex.  31:13.  We  have  no  alternative  but  to  recognize  it  as  an 
addition  by  a  Christian  transcriber  resting  on  kindred  Synagogue 
teaching.  See  Dalman,  Worte  Jesu,  p.  215. 


78  HE  OPENED  TO  US  THE  SCRIPTURES 


he  so  promptly  refutes  the  legalists  out  of  their 
own  code  by  appeal  to  the  unsophisticated  story  of 
David’s  dealings  with  Ahimeiech  the  priest,  at  the 
sanctuary  at  Nob?  Had  he  already,  as  a  higher 
critic,  classified  the  humanitarian  motive  on  which 
the  law  of  the  Sabbath  is  based  in  Deuteronomy 
5:14b,  15  with  the  prophetic  conception  of  fasting 
and  Sabbath-keeping  in  Isaiah  58,  and  contrasted 
this  with  the  ritualistic  motive  on  which  it  is  based 
in  the  P  form  in  Exodus  20:11?  Is  it  for  this  rea¬ 
son  that  he  insists  that  the  sacerdotal  conception  of 
ritual  is  not  the  only  one  in  Scripture,  and  bids  the 
cavillers,  “Go,  learn  what  that  meaneth,  T  will  have 
mercy  and  not  sacrifice’  ”?  There  is  no  need  of  so 
far-fetched  an  explanation.  A  simple,  intuitive 
sense  of  moral  and  religious  values  will  enable  one 
who  “knows  the  Scriptures”  to  discriminate  between 
the  transient  and  the  permanent  in  their  teaching. 
Any  one  that  is  willing  to  be  taught  of  God  can 
learn  to  distinguish  that  portion  which  may  justly 
be  called  “divine”  because  it  belongs  to  the  far- 
reaching  purpose  of  an  eternal,  self-revealing  Power 
that  makes  for  Righteousness  (a  purpose  far  tran¬ 
scending  the  comprehension  even  of  those  who  by 
divers  portions  and  in  divers  manners  become  from 
age  to  age  its  vehicles).  There  is  another  factor 
which  is  rightly  discriminated  as  relatively  “human,” 
because,  however  beautiful  to  the  eye  and  ear  of 
artist  in  rhetoric,  or  instructive  to  the  antiquarian, 
it  has  only  a  remoter  bearing  on  the  essential  mes¬ 
sage  of  Scripture.  For  the  essential  message  of 


THE  EXAMPLE  OF  JESUS  AND  PAUL  79 


Scripture  is  “the  gospel  of  the  reconciliation.”  That 
“testimony  of  Jesus”  is  the  spirit  of  prophecy.  Not 
as  scientist,  critic,  or  historian,  but  simply  as  one 
that  is  taught  of  God,  receiving  all  his  “traditions”  1 
from  the  Father,  does  Jesus  “penetrate  to  the  heart 
of  Old  Testament  teaching.” 

If  we  turn  to  the  story  of  Jesus’  controversy  with 
the  jealous  scribes  who  came  down  from  Jerusalem, 
decrying  his  work  and  seeking  to  detach  his  Galilean 
following  by  the  charge,  “He  casteth  out  by  Beelze¬ 
bub,”  we  shall  obtain  still  clearer  insight  into  the 
distinctive  quality  of  his  use  of  Scripture.  Buried 
in  the  records  of  a  past  revelation  and  blind  to  that 
of  their  own  times,  these  occupants  of  Moses’  seat 
had  not  even  repented  themselves  afterwards  when 
they  beheld  the  publicans  and  sinners  repenting  at 
the  preaching  of  John.  Even  now  they  were  hold¬ 
ing  in  their  grasp  the  keys  of  the  kingdom  (their 
better  knowledge),  themselves  not  entering  in,  and 
hindering  those  that  would  enter.  They  demand 
of  Jesus  “a  sign  from  heaven.”  He  offers  them  the 
great  sign  of  the  times,  the  token  of  the  coming  of 
Jehovah  to  execute  judgment,  “the  baptism  of 
John.”  For  to  Jesus  the  Baptist  was  in  a  true  sense 
“Elias  that  was  for  to  come.”  John’s  summons  to 
Israel,  “Repent,  for  the  kingdom  is  at  hand;  after 
me  cometh  he  that  winnoweth  the  threshing  floor, 

1  Mt.  ll:27  =  Lk.  10:22.  In  the  phrase  “All  things  are  delivered 
to  me  by  my  Father”  the  term  “delivered”  is  the  technical  ex¬ 
pression  for  learning  handed  down.  The  speaker  contrasts  his 
own  religious  consciousness,  which  is  “taught  of  God”  as  a  son 
is  taught  by  his  father,  with  the  traditional  lore  of  the  schools. 


80  HE  OPENED  TO  US  THE  SCRIPTURES 


gathering  the  wheat  into  his  garner  and  burning  up 
the  chaff  with  unquenchable  fire/’  was  the  message 
of  a  prophet,  and  more  than  a  prophet,  the  herald 
of  Jehovah’s  coming.  As  Jonah  had  come  to  the 
Ninevites,  without  a  sign,  proclaiming  only:  “Yet 
forty  days  and  Nineveh  shall  be  destroyed,”  so  John 
had  come  with  warning  to  this  generation  as  the 
last.  He  was  sent  to  “turn  the  heart  of  this  people 
back  again,”  as  Elijah  had  done  at  Carmel,  that  the 
Coming  might  not  smite  them  with  a  curse.  As 
a  whole,  the  Israel  of  Jesus’  time  turned  a  deaf  ear. 
The  Ninevites  had  repented.  They  of  the  Syna¬ 
gogue  held  aloof.  Therefore  in  the  judgment  the 
Ninevites  would  meet  the  better  fate.  Such  is  the 
substance  of  Jesus’  answer  to  the  demand.  The 
difference  between  his  use  of  Malachi  and  Jonah 
and  that  of  the  scribes  is  that,  to  him,  the  story  of 
Elijah  at  Carmel,  that  of  Jonah  at  Nineveh,  and 
the  cry  of  Malachi  for  reform  have  a  meaning  for 
“the  times.”  They  cry  out  for  application  to  his 
own  time,  the  urgent,  inexorable  present.  They 
speak  to  him  of  the  living  God,  whose  day  is  “at 
hand.”  To  the  scribes,  they  are  revelations  and 
oracles  of  the  past,  utterances  of  wonderful  prophets 
whose  tombs  they  build  while  they  disregard  their 
plea.  The  spirit  of  the  scribes  toward  the  prophets’ 
message  is  in  essence  the  same  as  that  of  their 
fathers  who  stoned  them. 

When  Jesus  speaks  of  the  baptism  of  John  as  a 
fulfillment  of  the  expectation  of  the  coming  of 
Elijah  to  effect  the  Great  Repentance  before  the 


THE  EXAMPLE  OF  JESUS  AND  PAUL  81 


Day  of  Jehovah’s  coining,  he  makes  plain  the  differ¬ 
ence  between  his  own  use  of  Scripture  and  that  of 
the  scribes.  The  scribes  say:  When  Elijah  comes 
he  will  sift  pedigrees  ( Edujoth  viii.  7).  Jesus  says: 
He  will  turn  the  heart  of  the  children  (Israel)  back 
to  the  Father,1  as  at  Carmel;  and  this  Great  Re¬ 
pentance  is  now  at  work.  The  turning  of  the  pub¬ 
licans  and  sinners  at  the  warning  of  John  is:  “Elias 
that  should  come.”  This  is  the  point  of  Jesus’ 
rebuke  of  his  generation.  He  makes  the  difference 
even  clearer  when  the  question  relates  to  his  own 
mission.  And  in  this  case  it  is  not  the  sneering 
scribes  alone,  but  the  doubting  Baptist  himself  to 
whom  the  teaching  is  also  directed.  The  scribes 
had  scoffed  at  Jesus’  exorcisms  as  wrought  by  col¬ 
lusion  with  Beelzebub.  Jesus  replied  by  pointing 
out  that  the  works  were  not  his,  but  his  Father’s. 
The  casting  out  was  “by  the  finger  [or  as  moderns 
would  say,  The  hand’]  of  God.”  The  inference  was 
that  the  Prince  of  this  world,  howrever  strong,  was 
already  giving  way  to  the  Stronger-than-he.  Yet 
Israel’s  blind  leaders  of  the  blind  cannot  see  it.  The 
kingdom  of  God  has  “overtaken  them  unawares.”  2 
It  is  in  the  midst  of  them,  yet  they  are  expecting 
it  to  “come  with  observation,”  and  crying,  “Lo  here, 


1  There  is  perhaps  a  difference  of  text  as  well  as  of  interpreta¬ 
tion.  That  followed  in  Edujoth  obviously  coincides  with  our  own 
of  Malachi  4:6,  But  Ecclesiasticus  48:10  quotes  the  verse  in  a 
form  corresponding  to  that  given  above.  Jehovah’s  wrath  is 
turned  away  from  “the  tribes  of  Jacob”  by  the  Great  Repentance 
of  Elijah,  thus  the  “Father”  is  reconciled  to  the  erring  sons. 

2  Such  is  the  literal  sense  of  the  Greek,  Mt.  12:28  =  Lk.  11:20. 


82  HE  OPENED  TO  US  THE  SCRIPTURES 


lo  there,”  like  men  groping  in  the  darkness.  To  him 
it  is  like  leaven,  or  like  a  grain  of  mustard-seed, 
unseen,  unnoticed,  but  working  with  the  silent,  all- 
subduing  power  of  God.  The  healings,  the  deliver¬ 
ances,  the  manifestations  of  gratitude  for  sins  for¬ 
given,  that  accompany  his  message— -these  are  to 
him  “the  Spirit  [in  Matthew  The  finger’]  of  God.” 

The  fourth  evangelist  connects  similar  teaching 
with  the  story  of  the  man  born  blind  (Jn.  9:1  ff.). 
The  Pharisees  say  to  the  healed:  “This  man  is  not 
from  God  because  he  keepeth  not  the  Sabbath.” 
The  scribes  make  an  elaborate  investigation  and 
threaten  expulsion  from  the  synagogue.  Then  they 
instruct  the  healed:  “Give  the  glory  to  God:  we 
know  that  this  man  is  a  sinner.”  When  pressed  to 
say  why  God  should  hear  the  prayer  of  such  a 
“sinner”  they  reply:  “We  know  that  God  hath 
spoken  unto  Moses,  but  as  for  this  man  we  know 
not  whence  he  is.”  God  works,  but  only  yesterday 
and  to-morrow;  never  to-day.  God  speaks  with 
the  trumpets  of  Sinai  and  the  judgment  day,  but 
never  with  the  still  small  voice  of  reason  and  con¬ 
science;  never  through  the  Spirit  of  adoption  that 
testifieth  with  our  spirit  that  we  are  born  of  God! 
So  the  successor  of  Paul  at  Ephesus  depicts  the 
difference  between  Jesus’  “light”  and  that  of  blind 
scribes  and  Pharisees  (Jn.  9:1—10:21). 

It  is  the  same  “works  of  the  Christ”  which  are 
appealed  to  in  Jesus’  reply  to  the  messengers  of  God. 
Queries  as  to  his  own  personality  and  future  mis¬ 
sion  are  deprecated.  Many  are  likely  to  be  “stum- 


THE  EXAMPLE  OF  JESUS  AND  PAUL  83 


bled”  on  these  points,  especially  if,  like  the  Baptist, 
they  have  entertained  expectations  of  “him  that 
should  come,”  based  largely  on  Malachi’s  warnings 
of  the  coming  fire  of  judgment.  But  the  messengers 
can  report  “what  they  see  and  hear”;  and  in  order 
that  its  significance  may  not  be  lost  upon  them  the 
work  is  summed  up  in  the  figures  (and  indeed  the 
very  language)  of  the  great  prophet  of  the  consola¬ 
tion  of  Israel.  As  Isaiah  had  predicted  of  the 
greater  redemption  to  which  Israel  of  the  exile 
should  look  forward,  so  it  was  already  coming  to 
pass: 

The  blind  receive  their  sight,  the  lame  walk, 
the  lepers  are  cleansed,  and  the  deaf  hear,  the 
dead  (people  of  Jehovah)  are  restored  to  life,  His 
“poor”  receive  a  proclamation  of  glad  tidings.1 

The  more  specific  application  of  this  passage  from 
Isaiah  61:1-4  to  the  work  of  Jesus  which  is  made 
in  the  so-called  “programmatic  discourse”  of  Luke 
4:16-21,  opening  the  description  of  the  ministry 
with  a  typical  scene  of  Jesus’  preaching  in  the 
synagogue  of  his  native  town,  is  less  reliable  than 
that  we  have  quoted  from  the  so-called  Q  material, 
so  that,  apposite  as  it  is  to  our  purpose,  we  can  only 
appeal  to  it  in  indirect  support  of  our  contention. 
It  appears  to  be  our  own  canonical  evangelist 
“Luke,”  who  in  this  typical  scene  is  making  use 
of  the  Isaian  reference  employed  in  the  source  from 

1  Is.  35:5  ff.;  26:19;  29:18  f.;  61:1-4  summarized  in  Mt.  11:5  = 
Lk.  7:22.  For  similar  adaptation  of  the  Isaian  figures  compare 
Shemoneh  Esreh  ii.,  quoted  above,  p.  75. 


84  HE  OPENED  TO  US  THE  SCRIPTURES 


which  he  draws  in  common  with  our  first  evangelist 
(Mt.  ll:5=Lk.  7:22).  It  is  well,  however,  to  note 
how  fully  the  later  writer  is  justified  in  his  depic¬ 
tion  of  the  scene  which  he  makes  typical  of  the 
ministry  as  a  whole.  “Luke”  simply  follows  the 
example  set.  What  Jesus  really  does  in  sending  his 
pregnant  answer  to  John  is  precisely  this.  He 
does  apply  to  his  own  ministry  Isaiah’s  sense  of  his 
calling  to  proclaim  a  gospel  of  peace  and  recon¬ 
ciliation  : 

The  Spirit  of  the  Lord  Jehovah  is  upon  me; 
Because  Jehovah  hath  anointed  me  to  proclaim 
glad  tidings  unto  the  poor. 

He  hath  sent  me  to  bind  up  the  broken-hearted, 
To  proclaim  liberty  to  the  captives, 

And  opening  of  the  prison  (or  “the  eyes”  to 
them  that  are  bound; 

To  proclaim  the  year  of  Jehovah’s  grace. 

The  point  we  are  seeking  to  establish  is  a  simple 
one,  fully  borne  out  by  either  of  the  passages  here 
quoted.  It  is  clear  from  either  or  both  that  Jesus 
did  appeal  to  the  “glad  tidings”  of  Isaiah  as  a  paral¬ 
lel  to  his  own  ministry,  just  as  he  applied  the 
promise  of  Malachi  4:5f.  in  interpreting  the  sig¬ 
nificance  of  the  ministry  of  John.  Both  instances 
show  the  same  distinctive  freedom  and  penetration 
to  the  heart  of  the  Old  Testament  teaching.  In¬ 
deed,  the  two  applications  of  Scripture  are  combined 
in  one.  Jesus  places  his  own  ministry  side  by  side 
with  that  of  the  great  Forerunner,  in  order  to  make 
it  the  gravamen  of  his  reproof  of  “the  cities  in  which 


THE  EXAMPLE  OF  JESUS  AND  PAUL  85 


most  of  his  mighty  works  were  done/’  that  they 
had  rejected  both  warning  and  entreaty,  both  the 
funeral  dirge  of  the  ascetic  of  the  wilderness,  and 
the  wedding  song  of  the  Friend  of  publicans  and 
sinners. 

In  this  great  discourse  on  the  Baptism  of  John, 
Jesus’  mission  is  presented  as  the  supreme  effort  of 
“the  Wisdom  of  God,”  that  gentle  Spirit  of  divine 
entreaty  and  forgiveness  which  in  the  writings  of 
Israel’s  sages  is  always  depicted  as  seeking  to  restore 
the  lost  and  wayward  sons  of  men.  Ever  rejected 
by  human  folly  “Wisdom”  finds  justification  for 
efforts  wasted  on  the  self-righteous,  despised  by  the 
wise  in  their  own  conceit,  in  the  welcome  she  re¬ 
ceives  among  the  “little  ones”  who  are  her  “chil¬ 
dren”  (disciples).  She  is  that  yearning,  redeeming 
agency  of  God  of  whose  relation  to  Israel  it  was 
written  (II  Chron.  36:15): 

Jehovah,  the  God  of  their  fathers,  sent  to  them 
by  his  messengers,  rising  up  early  and  sending, 
because  he  had  compassion  on  his  people,  and  on 
his  dwelling-place:  but  they  mocked  the  mes¬ 
sengers  of  God,  and  despised  his  words  and  scoffed 
at  his  prophets,  until  the  wrath  of  Jehovah  rose 
against  his  people,  till  there  was  no  remedy. 

It  is  therefore  from  an  unknown  poetic  plaint  of 
this  “Wisdom  of  God”  1  that  our  evangelists  have 

1In  Lk.  11:49-51;  13 :34f .  the  citation  is  duly  accredited: 
“Wherefore  the  Wisdom  of  God  (not  the  title  of  a  book  but  of  a 
literature)  saith.”  Mt.  23:34-39  gives  the  text  unbroken,  but 
suppresses  the  marks  of  quotation. 


86  HE  OPENED  TO  US  THE  SCRIPTURES 


drawn  their  description  of  Jesus’  parting  utterance 
as  he  turns  away  from  the  doomed  temple  and  the 
disputing  scribes  and  Pharisees: 

Behold,  I  send  unto  you  prophets  and  sages  and  scribes; 
Some  of  them  ye  will  kill  and  crucify, 

And  some  of  them  ye  will  scourge  in  your  synagogues, 
And  persecute  from  city  to  city. 

That  upon  you  might  come  all  the  righteous  blood  shed 
on  the  earth, 

From  the  blood  of  Abel  the  righteous 

Unto  the  blood  of  Zachariah  son  of  Barachiah,* 

Whom  ye  slew  between  the  sanctuary  and  the  altar. 

O  Jerusalem,  Jerusalem,  that  killest  the  prophets, 

And  stonest  them  that  are  sent  unto  thee! 

How  often  would  I  have  gathered  thy  children  together, 
Even  as  a  mother-bird  gathereth  her  brood  under  her 
wings ! 

And  ye  would  not. 

Behold  your  house  is  left  to  you  forsaken. 

For  I  say  unto  you,  Ye  shall  not  see  me  henceforth 
Till  ye  say,  Blessed  is  (the  messenger)  that  cometh  in 
the  name  of  Jehovah. 

Literary  form  and  style  in  this  superb  presenta¬ 
tion  of  the  Teaching  of  Jesus  must  probably  be 
ascribed,  as  in  all  similar  cases  in  contemporary 
literature,  to  the  primitive  evangelist,  he  who  con¬ 
ceives  the  Master’s  work  as  that  of  a  supreme 
incarnation  of  “the  Wisdom  of  God.”  But  this 
source  (Q)  is  the  oldest  and  most  authentic  that 
we  have.  It  unquestionably  gives  us  a  true  picture 

*A  mistake  for  “Jehoiada.”  See  II  Chron.  24:17-22,  and  com¬ 
pare  Zech.  1:1. 


THE  EXAMPLE  OF  JESUS  AND  PAUL  87 


of  the  substance  of  Jesus’  appeal  to  his  own  work 
and  that  of  John  as  present-day  evidences  of  that 
undying,  redemptive  activity  of  God  on  behalf  of 
his  people  to  which  Moses  and  the  prophets  had 
borne  witness  in  their  day.  The  essence  of  his  re¬ 
buke  of  the  evil  and  adulterous  generation  that 
demanded  a  sign  was  that  they  refused  to  learn  from 
these  same  Scriptures  to  read  the  signs  of  the  times. 
God  to  them  had  become  a  God  of  the  dead.  He 
was  no  longer  a  God  of  the  living. 

It  is  but  another  aspect  of  the  same  contrast 
between  one  who  knows  a  living  God  and  those 
who  know  him  through  books  they  have  read,  when 
Jesus  draws  parables  from  nature.  As  with  the 
history  of  his  own  times,  so  with  the  working  of 
leaven,  the  growth  of  plants,  the  labors  of  the  house¬ 
wife  and  the  husbandman.  There  is  indeed  no 
repudiation  of  the  catastrophic  expectation  of 
prophets  of  the  great  Day  of  Jehovah,  messengers  of 
warning  such  as  John.  The  world-harvest  is  sure 
to  come,  and  no  time  should  be  lost  in  making  set¬ 
tlement  with  the  Accuser.  Such  is  the  warning 
which  Jesus  reechoes  from  the  Baptist  with  added 
emphasis.  But  his  own  distinctive  contribution,  the 
thing  in  which  he  differs  from  contemporary  teach¬ 
ers,  is  that  he  perceives  the  present  working  of  a 
living  God  of  mercy  and  love;  a  silent,  unseen 
working,  but  irresistible.  Such  is  the  concurrent 
teaching  of  all  the  group  of  Parables  of  the  King¬ 
dom.  Whether  Jesus  speaks  of  “the  signs  of  the 
times”  or  the  working  of  God  in  nature,  or  in  peni- 


88  HE  OPENED  TO  US  THE  SCRIPTURES 


tent  human  hearts  melted  in  believing  gratitude, 
the  difference  between  him  and  the  scribes  in  their 
interpretation  of  Scripture  is  that  for  them  there 
is  a  great  gulf  between  the  God  of  whom  they  read 
and  the  God  who  lives  and  moves  around  them, 
while  to  Jesus  there  is  none.  He  makes  actuality  the 
interpreter  of  the  past. 

With  the  very  words  of  Paul  before  us,  fighting 
his  battle  against  those  who  sought  to  entangle 
his  converts  in  the  old  yoke  of  bondage,  it  is  surely 
unnecessary  to  repeat  the  familiar  examples  of 
Paul’s  teaching  on  the  right  use  of  Scripture.  It 
is  significant  that  he  falls  back  upon  Jeremiah’s  great 
prophecy  of  the  “new  covenant,”  a  law  written  on 
the  heart  and  sealed  with  a  promise  of  fatherly 
love,  instead  of  the  written  covenant  (the  Deuteron- 
omic  Code)  which  the  people  who  came  out  of 
Egypt  had  not  kept,  so  that  Jehovah  had  turned 
from  them.  Jeremiah  had  seen  the  futility  of  mere 
book  religion  unattended  by  the  inward  relation  of 
filial  obedience  and  fatherly  love;  and  Paul  in  his 
great  defense  of  the  “ministry  of  the  new  covenant,” 
contrasting  this  with  the  ministry  of  Moses  (II  Cor. 
3:1 — 6:10),  makes  this  sublime  protest  of  Jeremiah 
the  very  foundation  of  his  own.  Jeremiah  had 
understood  the  difference  between  law  and  gospel. 
He  had  caught  a  foregleam  of  the  glory  of  Christ, 
and  Paul,  set  for  the  defense  of  this  liberty  of  the 
children  of  God,  the  freedom  of  the  relation  of  filial 
love,  would  not  suffer  it  to  be  quenched  by  Chris¬ 
tians  who  had  no  higher  conception  of  the  new 


THE  EXAMPLE  OF  JESUS  AND  PAUL  89 


faith  than  to  think  of  Christ  as  a  second  Moses,  law¬ 
giver  on  a  higher  scale. 

The  essential  identity  of  Paul’s  struggle  against 
the  Judaizing  reactionaries  with  Jesus’  struggle 
against  the  scribes  and  Pharisees  is  partly  appre¬ 
ciated  to-day.  At  all  events,  it  lies  plainly  on  the 
surface  of  his  epistles  whenever  men  shall  be  will¬ 
ing  to  take  home  to  themselves  its  modern  applica¬ 
tion.  We  may  therefore  leave  it  to  produce  its 
own  effect.  Less  obvious  is  the  real  affinity  between 
Paul’s  appeal  to  the  present-day  living  and  active 
God,  and  that  of  Jesus.  We  have  seen  that  Jesus, 
when  challenged  for  a  spectacular  “sign,”  refused 
to  base  his  claims  on  this  kind  of  evidence,  even 
denouncing  those  who  required  it  when  they  should 
have  recognized  God’s  hand  in  the  gracious  work  of 
'  healing  and  redemption  going  on  among  the  “lost 
sheep”  about  them.  Surely  this  is  an  example  of 
that  immunity  to  current  superstition  and  credulity 
which  is  conferred,  quite  apart  from  scientific  at¬ 
tainment,  upon  those  who  have  the  true  prophet’s 
instinct  for  moral  and  religious  values,  Jesus  sees 
God  working  the  promised  redemption  of  his  people, 
forgiving  all  their  iniquities  and  healing  all  their 
diseases.  The  lame  walk,  the  lepers  are  cleansed, 
the  deaf  hear,  and  the  blind  see.  Best  of  all,  the 
poor  have  glad  tidings  (of  divine  forgiveness)  pro¬ 
claimed  unto  them.  Outcast  harlots,  hearing  the 
message,  come  to  testify  of  their  faith  and  love, 
bathing  the  feet  of  God’s  messenger  with  penitent 
tears.  These  things  mean  nothing  to  Simon  the 


90  HE  OPENED  TO  US  THE  SCRIPTURES 


Pharisee,  but  they  mean  much  to  Jesus.  The  pub¬ 
licans  and  harlots  throng  into  the  opened  door,  but 
the  scribes  and  Pharisees  hold  aloof.  Nay,  they 
do  not  even  repent  themselves  afterward  when  “the 
finger  of  God”  has  been  working  deliverance  in  their 
presence,  but  stubbornly  demand  “a  sign.”  Jesus 
sees  God  raising  to  life  a  nation  that  was  seemingly 
dead,  as  in  Isaiah’s  figure  of  the  second  redemption 
(Is.  26:16-19).  The  blind  Pharisee  sits  at  the 
same  table  and  says:  “This  man,  if  he  were  a 
prophet,  would  have  perceived  who  and  what  man¬ 
ner  of  woman  this  is  that  toucheth  him,  that  she 
is  a  sinner.” 

Paul  is  not  greater  than  Jesus;  not  even  in  respect 
to  the  current  superstitions  of  the  day.  It  is  true 
that  neither  he  nor  his  great  follower  at  Ephesus 
to  whom  we  owe  the  “spiritual  Gospel”  give  any 
heed  to  the  popular  belief  in  demon-possession  and 
exorcism.  The  only  exorcism  recognized  either  by 
Paul  or  “John”  is  the  “casting  out  of  the  Prince  of 
this  world.”  It  is  possible  that  this  curious  reti¬ 
cence  on  a  point  made  so  prominent  by  other  New 
Testament  writers  is  due  to  the  fact  that  Paul  and 
“John”  represent  a  higher  stage  of  culture.  If  so, 
it  is  one  of  the  incidental  phenomena  of  Scripture, 
interesting  to  the  historical  critic,  but  of  no  special 
importance  to  the  student  of  religion,  save  as  it 
illustrates  again  the  wide  differences  of  cultural 
level  on  which  God  spake  of  old  time  unto  the 
fathers.  Jesus  apparently  accepted  the  common 
belief  in  individual  demon-possession.  Paul  and 


THE  EXAMPLE  OF  JESUS  AND  PAUL  91 


“John”  apparently  do  not.  In  the  latter  case,  the 
superiority  to  popular  superstition  characteristic  of 
all  three  may  be  due  in  part  to  scientific  advance. 
In  the  case  of  Paul  and  “John”  it  is  mainly,  in  the 
case  of  Jesus  wholly,  a  matter  of  the  prophetic  in¬ 
stinct  for  moral  and  religious  values  that  proves 
“inspiration.”  The  man  who  has  it  is  “a  prophet,” 
notwithstanding  Simon  the  Pharisee.  Paul  reasons 
on  the  basis  of  the  visible  agency  of  the  living, 
redeeming  God,  just  as  Jesus  does.  But  he  never 
would  have  learned  so  to  reason  without  Jesus.  He 
would  have  been  a  Pharisee  to  the  bitter  end. 

Here  is  the  deeper  affinity  of  Paul  to  Jesus.  The 
Master  has  brought  him  to  know  the  living  God, 
“the  Father  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ.”  Paul  knows 
him  by  just  one  great,  conclusive  phenomenon:  the 
present,  redeeming  Spirit.  He  who  has  received  the 
adoption  of  the  Spirit  knows  all.  He  has  the  wit¬ 
ness  in  him.  So  Paul’s  great  disciple  justly  phrases 
it.  He  knows  that  whereas  he  was  dead  now  he 
lives,  he  is  victorious  over  the  world,  he  can  bid 
defiance  to  the  powers  of  death  and  hell.  Jesus’ 
“witness  of  the  Spirit”  is  the  same.  Outward  mani¬ 
festations,  in  healings  and  the  like,  are  not  indiffer¬ 
ent.  Jesus  values  his  “mighty  works”  as  Paul  also 
values  his  “signs  of  an  Apostle.”  But  Jesus  only 
values  them  as  they  bear  outward  witness  to  the 
inward  reality.  Like  the  “tongues”  which  to  Paul 
were  “for  a  sign,  not  to  them  that  believe,  but  for 
the  unbelieving”  (I  Cor.  14:22),  the  “mighty  works” 
had  evidential  value  simply  to  prove  to  the  unbe- 


92  HE  OPENED  TO  US  THE  SCRIPTURES 


lieving  that  the  overthrow  of  Satan’s  kingdom  is 
already  begun.  The  “strong  man  armed”  is  no 
longer  “master  of  the  house”  (a  play  on  the  mean¬ 
ing  of  “Beelzebub”).  A  stronger  than  he  is  work¬ 
ing  with  Jesus  and  taking  from  him  his  “spoils.” 
By  “the  Spirit  of  God”  the  bonds  of  sin,  disease, 
and  death  are  being  broken  in  sunder.  Such  is 
Jesus’  interpretation  of  “the  mighty  works.”  It  is 
distinctive  of  Jesus,  not  that  he  has  a  scientific 
interpretation  of  miracle,  but  that  he  has  a  religious 
one.  That  of  the  scribes  also  purports  to  be.  In 
reality,  it  is  neither  scientific  nor  religious. 

Paul’s  converts  at  Corinth  value  their  “gifts  of 
the  Spirit”  from  the  same  outward,  spectacular 
standpoint  as  the  scribes  who  demanded  a  sign  from 
Jesus.  Possibly  this  was  due  to  the  influx  of 
Judaizers  in  this  church,  since  Paul  reminds  them 
that  this  is  a  typically  Jewish  tendency  (I  Cor. 
1:22).  More  probably  it  was  simply  a  relic  of 
native  paganism,  of  which  neither  Jews  nor  Gentiles 
are  free,  nor  even  the  modern  Christian  world. 
Paul’s  greatness  is  nowhere  so  manifest  as  in  the 
immortal  chapter  in  which  he  teaches  these  Corin¬ 
thian  lovers  of  the  marvelous  that  the  vital,  endur¬ 
ing,  divine  “gifts  of  the  Spirit”  are  faith  and  hope 
and  love.  And  love  is  the  greatest  of  these,  because 
it  is  of  the  very  nature  of  God  himself.  He  whose 
life  is  love  has  the  Spirit  of  adoption.  He  is  born 
of  God.  If  this  be  the  root,  as  it  was  with  Jesus, 
of  one’s  whole  life,  then  “tongues”  and  miracles 
and  prophecy  and  “knowledge”  and  the  rest  are 


THE  EXAMPLE  OF  JESUS  AND  PAUL  93 


“signs”  indeed.  They  bear  witness  even  to  unbe¬ 
lievers  that  this  people  is  the  “adoption”  of  God. 
If  there  come  in  one  who  is  unlearned  or  unbelieving 
“he  will  fall  down  on  his  face  and  worship  God, 
declaring  that  God  is  among  you  indeed.”  If  love 
be  not  the  root,  “tongues”  are  clanging  brass. 
Prophecy,  were  it  to  the  knowing  of  all  mysteries, 
and  miracles,  were  it  to  the  uprooting  of  mountains, 
are  “nothing.”  The  “gifts  of  the  Spirit”  are  faith 
and  hope  and  love  together  with  the  outward  mani¬ 
festations  of  these. 

If  the  manifestation  be  so  marvelous  that  the 
world  cries  “miracle,”  well  and  good.  That  is  for 
science  to  say.  If  science  call  the  phenomenon  by 
another  name,  well  and  good.  We  that  know  this 
agency  as  “a  power  not  ourselves”  know  that  love 
is  of  God.  In  this  sense  love  is  “supernatural”; 
and  there  is  no  other  sense  in  which  we  can  admit 
the  term. 

A  picket  frozen  on  duty, 

A  mother  starved  for  her  brood, 

Socrates  drinking  the  hemlock, 

And  Jesus  on  the  rood; 

And  millions  that  humble  and  nameless 
The  strait,  hard  pathway  plod, 

Some  call  it  Consecration — 

And  others  call  it  God. 

This  is  that  “demonstration  of  the  Spirit”  which 
fails  not  as  age  follows  age.  The  “tongues”  may 
give  way  to  other  forms  of  utterance.  The  healings 
and  helps  may  take  place  through  other  means,  the 


94  HE  OPENED  TO  US  THE  SCRIPTURES 


“prophecy”  and  “gnosis”  nay  be  “done  away.” 
While  faith  and  hope  and  love  remain  these  will 
produce  their  fruits,  and  the  fruits  of  the  Spirit  will 
be  the  witness  to  the  world,  a  witness  that  “abides.” 
So  Paul  repeats  the  answer  of  Jesus  to  those  that 
demand  “a  sign.”  There  is  no  better  example  of 
how  the  sense  of  moral  and  religious  values  can 
lift  a  man  above  the  superstitions  of  his  age.  We 
rightly  marvel  at  Paul’s  superiority  to  pagan  and 
Jewish  survivals  in  the  Corinthian  notion  of  “signs.” 
But  Paul  did  not  invent  the  method.  He  learned 
it  from  Jesus. 


CHAPTER  V 


THE  WITNESS  OF  THE  SPIRIT 


CHAPTER  V 


THE  WITNESS  OF  THE  SPIRIT 

From  the  historical  survey  already  given  it  must 
be  clearly  apparent  that  the  main  issue  on  which 
Christianity  parted  company  with  Judaism  was  the 
use  of  Scripture.  Jesus  came  into  conflict  with  the 
religion  of  the  Synagogue  because  under  the  leader¬ 
ship  of  scribe  and  Pharisee  it  was  already  becom¬ 
ing  a  religion  of  the  book  such  as  it  afterwards 
became.  It  knew  a  God  of  yesterday.  He  had 
'  given  the  commandments  amid  the  thunders  of 
Sinai.  It  knew  a  God  of  to-morrow.  He  was  to 
intervene  for  judgment  with  the  trump  of  the  arch¬ 
angel  at  the  last  day.  But  the  God  of  to-day,  of 
nature,  of  history,  of  growing  human  spirit,  it  did 
not  know.  Jesus  revealed  this  unknown  God.  He 
was  the  God  of  Abraham,  Isaac  and  Jacob,  and  also 
of  all  “the  children  of  God  that  are  scattered 
abroad.”  He  was  the  “living”  God. 

Paul  continued  the  struggle.  For  not  even  those 
who  had  companied  with  Jesus  from  the  baptism 
of  John  until  he  was  taken  up  could  quite  appre¬ 
ciate  how  far-reaching  were  the  new  principles  he 
had  taught.  The  yoke  of  bondage  had  to  be  thrown 
off  again,  and  with  the  same  distinction  as  before 

between  the  perishing  letter  and  the  abiding  spirit. 

97 


98  HE  OPENED  TO  US  THE  SCRIPTURES 


Never  had  there  been  a  man,  save  only  Jesus, 
more  loyal  than  Paul  to  “the  law  and  the  prophets.” 
And  never  had  there  been  one  to  deal  so  ruthlessly 
with  the  mere  letter  of  the  commandment.  To 
Paul  it  was  not,  and  never  had  been,  “a  command¬ 
ment  such  that  it  could  give  life.”  If  it  became  a 
pedagogue  1  to  lead  men  to  Christ  at  never  so  great 
a  cost  of  painful  discipline,  then  well  and  good. 
Men  should  be  thankful  for  the  enlightenment  even 
of  a  condemning  conscience.  The  law  was  of  God, 
for  through  it  came  the  knowledge  of  sin.  But  to 
speak  of  it  as  “life-giving”  in  itself,  as  Paul  had 
been  taught  in  the  Synagogue,  was  the  contrary  of 
the  truth.  In  itself  it  was  “a  ministration  of 
death”  (II  Cor.  3:7-9). 

The  generation  that  followed  Paul  was  largely 
reactionary.  Even  among  the  churches  of  Asia,  the 
great  mission-field  of  Paul,  the  neo-legalists  became 
dominant.  Ephesus  had  been  Paul’s  headquarters, 
and  here  at  the  close  of  the  first  century  we  find  a 
distinctly  Palestinian  infusion.  Paul’s  type  of  gos¬ 
pel  had  given  opportunity  to  devastating  inroads 
on  the  part  of  Hellenizing  theosophy;  it  was  natural 
enough  that  the  reaction  against  it  should  take  on 
first  of  all  the  form  of  a  reversion  to  the  Jewish - 
Christian  type  of  neo-legalism.  The  gospel  is  con¬ 
ceived  as  Law  and  Promise.  In  spite  of  their 
Pauline  foundation  the  Churches  of  Asia  are  using, 

1  The  word  does  not  mean  “teacher.”  The  pcedagogus  was  what 
the  etymology  implies,  a  servant  who  took  charge  of  the  school¬ 
boy  as  mentor  and  disciplinarian  in  loco  parentis. 


THE  WITNESS  OF  THE  SPIRIT 


99 


early  in  the  second  century,  when  we  are  first  able 
to  trace  their  type  of  doctrine,  the  Palestinian,  neo- 
legalistic  Gospel  of  Matthew  as  their  standard,  and 
contending  earnestly  for  this  as  the  apostolic  digest 
(cvvra^Ls)  of  the  “precepts  of  the  Lord,”  side  by 
side  with  the  Revelation  of  John  concerning  the 
promised  New  Jerusalem,  against  the  heretics  who 
were  “perverting  the  precepts  of  the  Lord  to  their 
own  lusts”  and  “denying  the  (physical)  resurrection 
and  the  judgment.”  Polycarp  (112-115)  and 
Papias  (140-150)  are  the  great  champions  of  this 
return  to  the  “tradition  handed  down  from  the 
beginning.” 

Yet  this  Palestinian  molding  of  the  Pauline  type 
of  gospel  is  by  no  means  without  a  protest.  Even 
apocalypse,  which  the  practice  of  the  time  describes 
as  “prophecy,”  closely  as  it  conforms  to  the  literary 
forms  of  this  distinctly  Jewish  development,  takes 
on  in  Christian  hands  a  marked  difference  in  one 
significant  characteristic.  Archdeacon  Charles,  our 
greatest  authority  in  this  field,  makes  the  striking 
remark  in  his  recent  Schweich  Lectures: 

The  differentia  between  Jewish  and  Christian 
apocalypses  is  just  this,  that  whereas  in  the 
former  the  Law  takes  the  chief  place,  in  the  latter 
it  takes  quite  a  secondary  position  or  (as  in  Reve¬ 
lation)  is  not  mentioned  at  all.1 

But  a  far  greater  protest  meets  us  in  the  field  of 
gospel  tradition,  the  representation  of  the  life  and 

1  The  Apocalypse,  R.  H.  Charles,  1919,  p.  68,  note  2. 


100  HE  OPENED  TO  US  THE  SCRIPTURES 


teaching  of  Jesus.  Here  in  the  person  of  the  fourth 
evangelist  Paul  found  a  great  “vindicator”  at  Ephe¬ 
sus  some  forty  years  after  his  death,  who  was  able 
to  lift  again  the  conception  of  the  gospel  above  the 
level  of  mere  improved  Law  and  Promise  to  which 
Jewish-Christian  reaction  had  reduced  it.  But  this 
teacher,  too,  found  “many  adversaries,”  both  within 
and  without  the  Church.  For  half  a  century  his 
“spiritual  Gospel”  remained  neglected,  almost  un¬ 
known.  Then  at  last,  because  men  had  come  to 
ascribe  it  to  the  Apostle  John,  the  Pauline  Gospel 
of  the  “Christ  not  after  the  flesh  but  after  the 
spirit”  came  to  its  own.  Here  at  last  is  spiritual 
insight.  The  fourth  evangelist  does  not  lack  pene¬ 
tration  to  appreciate  wherein  the  issue  really  lay 
between  the  book-religion  of  Judaism  and  the  spir¬ 
ituality  of  Jesus  and  Paul. 

There  are  many  things  which  we  do  not  have  a 
right  to  expect  of  this  “John,”  great  spiritual  leader 
as  he  is.  One  such  thing  which  we  have  no  right 
to  expect  is  that  he  will  entirely  eschew  the  alle¬ 
gorizing,  non-historical  use  of  Scripture  common  to 
his  time,  and  especially  dear  to  that  Alexandrian 
type  of  religious  teaching  to  which  he  shows  himself 
largely  indebted.  We  must  expect  to  find  even  the 
fourth  evangelist  discovering  wonderful  “types”  in 
such  coincidences  as  the  name  of  a  pool  in  Jerusalem 
“which  is  by  interpretation  Sent,”  the  fact  that 
Jesus’  garments  were  so  divided  by  the  executioners 
as  to  fulfill  to  the  letter  the  description  of  the  victim 
in  Psalm  22:18:  “They  parted  my  garments  among 


THE  WITNESS  OF  THE  SPIRIT 


101 


them,  and  on  my  vesture  they  did  cast  lots,”  that 
he  used  the  words  “I  thirst”  from  the  same  Psalm, 
or  that  there  were  just  153  fishes  in  the  marvelous 
haul  of  John  21:11,  which,  as  Jerome  tells  us,  would 
include  “every  sort”  if  one  fish  was  of  every  species 
then  recognized.  This  is  very  like  the  Alexandrian 
allegorizing  interpretation  of  Pseudo-Barnabas,  and 
there  is  enough  more  of  the  same  sort  even  in  the 
work  of  the  sublimest  of  the  evangelists  to  teach  us 
not  to  expect  miraculous  exemption  from  the  foibles 
of  his  school. 

But  there  is  something  more.  The  fourth  evan¬ 
gelist  lays  hold  of  the  Synoptic  sections  on  the  con¬ 
flict  of  Jesus  with  the  scribes  and  Pharisees  who 
seek  to  impose  on  him  the  authority  of  Moses  (Mk. 
2:1 — 3:6)  and  the  charge  of  collusion  with  Beelze¬ 
bub  (Mt.  12:22-32).  Of  the  latter  parallel  we  have 
already  spoken.1  The  former  is  drawn  out  by 
“John”  into  the  form  of  a  dialogue  of  Jesus  with  the 
scribes  in  Jerusalem  who  plot  against  his  life  be¬ 
cause  he  has  “made  a  man  whole  on  the  Sabbath 
day”  (Jn.  5:1-47,  continued  in  7:15-24).  It  is  in 
this  dialogue,  contrasting  the  authority  of  the  Son 
of  Man  with  the  authority  of  Moses,  that  the  fourth 
evangelist  sets  forth  his  conception  of  the  difference 
between  Christ’s  use  of  Scripture  and  that  of  “the 
Jews.”  One  who  carefully  examines  it  will  see  that 
the  author  of  the  dialogue  is  not  merely  developing 
the  scenes  of  Mark  2:1 — 3:6  to  show  Jesus’  rightful 
claim  as  Son  of  Man  to  forgive  sins  and  to  heal,  as 
1  Above,  p.  81. 


102  HE  OPENED  TO  US  THE  SCRIPTURES 


well  as  to  be  Lord  of  the  Sabbath,  but  that  he  is 
also  using  the  distinction  of  Paul  regarding  the 
Scriptures,  which  as  the  scribes  use  them  are  far 
from  conferring  eternal  life,  but  used  as  they  should 
be  lead  men  to  Him  who  is  the  lord  and  giver  of 
life  indeed.  The  subject  of  the  discourse  is  the 
authority  of  Moses  vs.  the  Authority  of  the  Son  of 
Man. 

In  the  latter  part  (Jn.  5:31-47)  the  debate  turns 
upon  the  “witness”  borne  to  the  Son  of  Man.  This 
is  a  threefold,  divine  witness.  First,  that  of  John, 
the  lamp  that  burned  and  shined  for  a  time  (verses 
33-35) ;  then,  the  works  of  healing,  to  which  in 
Synoptic  tradition  Jesus  had  made  his  appeal 
(verse  36;  cf.  Mk.  2:1-12);  finally  the  Father's 
own  witness  in  the  very  Scriptures  for  whose  sake 
the  conspirators  are  seeking  to  kill  him  (verses  37— 
47;  cf.  Mk;  3:1-6). 

Were  it  only  that  in  this  section  Jesus  claims  the 
witness  of  Moses  “who  wrote  of  me,”  and  that  here 
and  elsewhere  in  the  same  Gospel  he  declares  that 
the  Scriptures  “bear  witness  of  me,”  we  might  take 
the  sense  to  be  no  more  than  the  ordinary  type  of 
“Scripture  fulfillments”  by  coincidence  of  prophetic 
foresight  with  the  fact.  We  have  indeed  enough, 
and  more  than  enough,  of  this  sort  of  juggling  with 
words  in  the  writings  of  the  time;  and,  as  we  have 
seen,  the  fourth  evangelist  has  his  full  share  of  it. 
To  him  the  utterance  of  Caiaphas  to  the  Sanhedrin 
by  which  he  secures  the  condemnation  of  Jesus  is 
a  more  than  human  utterance.  When  Caiaphas 


THE  WITNESS  OF  THE  SPIRIT 


103 


urged,  “It  is  expedient  for  you  that  one  man  should 
die  for  the  people,  and  that  the  whole  nation  perish 
not,”  he  said  this  “not  of  himself:  but  being  high 
priest  that  year  he  prophesied  that  Jesus  should  die 
for  the  nation.”  One  cannot  deny  affinity  here  with 
Philo’s  idea  of  involuntary  prophecy.  We  have 
noted  the  same  idea  in  I  Pt.  1 : Ilf.  Again  when 
he  says  that  Abraham  rejoiced  to  see  Jesus’  day 
and  was  glad  at  beholding  it  (8:56)  the  con¬ 
ception  does  not  rise  far  above  the  level  of  con¬ 
temporary  interpretations  of  Genesis  17:1-17,  where 
the  “laughter”  of  Abraham  at  the  promise  that 
kings  should  come  of  him  is  made  out  to  be  a  laugh¬ 
ter  of  rejoicing  at  the  vision  of  the  Messiah.  More¬ 
over,  “John”  certainly  goes  as  far  as  any  of  our 
evangelists  in  making  Isaiah’s  complaint  that  he 
is  sent  to  a  people  deaf  to  the  message  (Is.  6:10) 
an  efficient  cause  1  of  Jewish  resistance  to  the  mes¬ 
sage  of  Jesus  (Jn.  12:37-40),  and  he  further  adds: 
“These  things  said  Isaiah  because  he  saw  his  glory 
and  he  spake  of  him.”  We  have  here  “Scripture 
fulfillment”  as  current  interpretation  understands 
it,  whether  in  Synagogue  or  Church.  It  does  not 
help  the  case  to  deny  the  fact. 

But  there  is  also  something  more  and  deeper. 
The  fourth  evangelist  does  not  think  of  Jesus  merely 
as  a  man  among  men.  He  is,  before  all  else,  the 
eternal  Word  of  God  incarnate.  The  creative,  re- 

1  For  a  typical  instance  of  current  belief  regarding  the  word  of 
prophecy  as  an  efficient  cause  see  Rom.  9:8  f.  The  belief  is  very 
ancient;  cf.  Gen.  27:35  f. 


104  HE  OPENED  TO  US  THE  SCRIPTURES 


vealing,  and  redemptive  Wisdom  of  God  “taber¬ 
nacled”  in  him  so  that  men  might  see  His  glory,  as 
Isaiah  in  vision  had  seen  the  cloud  and  fire  of  the 
“glory”  going  up  a  second  time  in  the  midst  of  a 
redeemed  Israel  (Is.  58:8,  10  f.;  60:1-20).  This 
Word  was  the  life,  and  the  life  was  the  light  of  men 
in  all  the  ages  (Jn.  1:4,  14,  16).  What  our  evan¬ 
gelist  means  by  this  Word  of  life  he  sets  forth 
explicitly  in  his  Epistle  (I  Jn.  1:1  f.).  It  is  “the 
eternal  life,  which  was  with  the  Father  and  was 
manifested  unto  us.”  Therefore,  when  in  the  dia¬ 
logue  with  the  scribes  he  makes  Jesus  claim  the 
witness  of  Moses  and  the  prophets,  we  do  him 
injustice  if  we  think  only  of  the  false  exegesis  of  the 
time  with  its  bewildering  distortions  of  the  historic 
sense.  Deep  underneath  these  word-plays  of  Alex¬ 
andrian  typology  glows  the  evangelist’s  conscious¬ 
ness  of  the  prophetic  mind.  He  seems  to  realize  that 
Isaiah  has  not  mere  miraculous  foresight,  but  in¬ 
sight  into  the  movement  of  the  Spirit  of  God. 
Abraham  and  Isaiah  both  had  seen  that  Shekinah, 
that  “indwelling”  of  God  with  his  people.  It  is 
as  this  revealing,  redemptive  Word  of  God  that 
“John”  makes  Jesus  oppose  the  unbelieving  scribes 
with  the  “witness”  of  Moses  and  the  prophets.  The 
culmination  of  the  opposition  is  this  (v.  39  f.) : 

Ye  search  the  Scriptures  because  ye  think  that 
in  them  ye  have  eternal  life;  and  these  are  they 
which  bear  witness  of  me;  and  ye  will  not  come 
unto  me  that  ye  may  have  life. 


THE  WITNESS  OF  THE  SPIRIT 


105 


The  author  of  this  deepest,  maturest  interpreta¬ 
tion  of  the  gospel  story  is  he  who  contributes  most 
among  New  Testament  writers  toward  a  truly  Chris¬ 
tian  doctrine  of  sacred  Scripture.  Neither  he  nor 
his  great  predecessor  at  Ephesus,  the  Apostle  Paul, 
has  scientific  emancipation  from  current  misconcep¬ 
tions  as  to  the  sacred  writings.  Both  use  an  Alex¬ 
andrian,  allegorizing  method  of  interpretation,  as 
do  their  contemporaries.  And  yet  “John”  is  not 
unaware  of  a  profound  difference  between  Jesus’ 
use  of  the  Scriptures  and  that  of  the  scribes.  And 
he  does  not  stop  with  this  recognition  of  difference 
on  the  part  of  the  Christian  from  the  Jewish  inter¬ 
preter,  but  in  his  accustomed  deeper  reflection  brings 
it  into  line  with  his  whole  conception  of  “the  Word 
of  life.”  To  him,  the  revealing,  redemptive  Spirit 
of  God,  which  alone  brings  spiritual  life  and  light 
to  all  mankind,  is  of  the  very  substance  of  God 
himself,  coeternal  with  the  Creator.  It  is  to  the 
inspiration  of  this  omnipresent,  eternal,  releaving, 
and  redemptive  Spirit  of  God  that  all  the  light 
is  due,  which,  shining  through  the  world’s  dark¬ 
ness,  has  given  to  men  among  all  races  and  in 
all  ages  “the  right  to  be  called  the  children  of  God.” 
This  eternal  Spirit  of  light  and  love  and  truth  is  the 
source  of  all  true  revelation  and  inspiration.  Both 
in  the  old  time  and  the  new  this  “Wisdom”  of  God 
was  the  revealer  of  the  Father  and  the  redeemer  of 
straying  souls  of  men.  The  law  which  was  “given 
by  Moses”  owes  all  that  it  reveals  of  light  and  truth 
to  him.  And  in  the  earthly  life  of  Jesus  this  Word 


106  HE  OPENED  TO  US  THE  SCRIPTURES 


is  seen  incarnate.  Grace  and  truth  became  the  pos¬ 
session  of  all  those  who  were  the  partners  of  this 
life. 

Here,  then,  is  the  difference.  The  scribes  have 
set  themselves  to  the  study  of  the  Law.  By  obedi¬ 
ence  to  the  precepts  of  Moses  they  count  themselves 
sure  of  a  share  in  the  world  to  come.  This  is  then- 
pride  and  joy.  So  Paul  depicts  the  typical  Phari¬ 
see  (Rom.  2:17-20).  Israel  is  thus  made  a  guide 
of  the  blind,  a  light  of  them  that  are  in  darkness. 
Resting  upon  the  Law,  and  discriminating  the  things 
acceptable  through  the  instruction  gained  from  it, 
he  who  bears  the  name  of  a  Jew  can  thus  “glory  in 
God  and  in  the  knowledge  of  his  will.”  “John” 
reproduces  precisely  this  thought  of  Paul  when  he 
makes  Jesus  say  to  the  scribes  who  were  conspiring 
to  kill  him,  “Ye  search  the  Scriptures  because  ye 
think  that  in  them  ye  have  eternal  life.”  Whether 
in  Jewish  scribes  and  Pharisees,  or  in  Jewish  con¬ 
verts  opposing  Paul,  or  in  moderns  clinging  to  the 
letter,  while  blind  to  the  spirit  of  an  inspired  past, 
this  is  true  bibliolatry,  the  religion  of  the  book. 

Over  against  this,  “John”  has  placed  the  figure 
of  the  prophet  who  came  “not  to  destroy  but  to  ful¬ 
fill.”  As  truly  as  “Matthew,”  he  appreciates  that 
Jesus  was  no  iconoclast  but  the  sort  of  radical  who 
is  the  truest  conservative,  because  intent  on  pene¬ 
trating  to  that  which  is  vital  and  enduring  in  the 
heritage  of  the  past.  To  “Matthew,”  Jesus  is  the 
second  Moses,  the  giver  of  a  higher  law,  a  “righteous¬ 
ness”  which  by  going  to  the  very  springs  of  action 


THE  WITNESS  OF  THE  SPIRIT 


107 


exceeds  that  of  “the  scribes  and  Pharisees.”  To 
“John/’  he  is  the  incarnate  “Wisdom  of  God,”  giver 
of  “grace  and  truth.”  He  offers  not  law  but  life,  a 
spirit  infused  from  above.  To  “come  to  him”  is  to 
enter  into  contact  with  this  life  of  God,  incarnate 
through  the  ages  in  men  who  by  it  were  made  to  be 
“prophets  and  friends  of  God.”  For,  while  to  them 
it  was  given  by  divers  portions  and  in  divers  man¬ 
ners,  to  him  it  was  not  given  by  measure,  but  in  its 
fullness;  he  the  source  and  fountain  head,  we  all 
receiving  from  his  fullness,  one  grace  upon  another. 

He  that  has  the  law  of  Moses  holds  in  his  hand 
the  chief  guide-book  to  life.  So  it  speaks  of  itself 
(Dt.  30:15  f.),  so  the  rabbis  delighted  to  call  it, 
so  it  actually  is,  if  rightly  used.  But,  if  wrongly, 
then  Moses  himself  will  be  the  chief  accuser  of  those 
who  set  their  hope  on  him.  For  Moses  and  the 
prophets  wrote  of  the  eternal  Word.  His  writings 
bear  witness  of  that  eternal,  redemptive  “Wisdom” 
of  God  whose  work  is  perennial  through  the  ages, 
but  reaches  its  acme  in  Jesus  Christ.  Thus  “John” 
echoes  the  warning  of  Paul  (II  Cor.  3:5 — 4:6;  cf. 
Jn.  5:45-47).  The  wrong  use  is  to  make  the  Scrip¬ 
tures  a  book  of  commandments  for  obedience  to 
which  God  rewards  with  “a  share  in  the  world  to 
come.”  The  right  use  is  to  make  them  witnesses 
to  “the  life,  even  the  eternal  life  which  was  with 
the  Father  and  was  manifested,”  so  that  a  man 
should  come  into  contact  with  it  and  share  it.  He 
that  hath  the  Scriptures  in  his  hands  and  uses  them 
thus  has  a  guide-book  to  the  eternal  life.  They 


108  HE  OPENED  TO  US  THE  SCRIPTURES 


will  become  his  pedagogus,  leading  him  to  the  Son. 
He  that  hath  the  Son  hath  the  life  itself,  and  need- 
eth  no  other  than  this  witness  of  God.  “For  the 
witness  is  this,  that  God  gave  unto  us  eternal  life, 
and  this  life  is  in  his  Son.  He  that  hath  the  Son 
hath  the  life;  he  that  hath  not  the  Son  hath  not 
the  life”  (I  Jn.  5:10-12). 

Paul's  great  successor  at  Ephesus  goes  to  the  very 
heart  of  things  in  thus  carrying  back  the  Pauline 
conception  of  the  gospel  as  a  gift  of  new  life,  to 
apply  it  to  the  case  of  the  scribes  who  appealed 
against  Jesus  to  the  authority  of  Moses.  If  the 
gospel  be  only  a  new  and  better  law,  the  gift  of  a 
second  Moses  whose  commandments,  when  observed, 
obtain  the  reward  of  life  hereafter,  then  there  is  no 
higher  expression  of  it  than  the  Sermon  on  the 
Mount,  whose  doctrine  is:  “Be  ye  imitators  of  God 
and  walk  in  love  as  beloved  children  of  the  Highest.” 
Matthew  so  conceives  it,  aiming  to  teach  all  men 
everywhere  to  observe  “all  things  whatsoever  Jesus 
commanded”  (Mt.  28:20).  His  account  of  Jesus’ 
reply  to  the  question  how  eternal  life  may  be  ob¬ 
tained  adds  the  new  commandment  of  love  to  the 
Mosaic  decalogue,  and  promises  admission  to  life 
as  the  reward  of  obedience  (Mt.  19:16-19).  This 
is  far  better  than  the  old  legalism  of  the  Synagogue. 
As  much  better  as  taking  the  loving,  forgiving  na¬ 
ture  of  God  for  our  standard  is  better  than  enslave¬ 
ment  to  written  precepts  of  ancient  time.  But  it 
is  not  “gospel”  as  Paul  understands  the  term.  Gos¬ 
pel,  as  Paul  and  “John”  understand  it,  is  not  mere 


THE  WITNESS  OF  THE  SPIRIT 


100 


imitation  of  the  divine  nature  but  participation  in 
it.  The  Christian  Apostle  and  the  evangelist  pro¬ 
claim  not  a  mere  improved  process  for  obtaining 
life,  but  the  impartation  of  life  through  that  Spirit 
of  adoption  which  makes  us  know  that  we  are  heirs 
of  God  and  joint-heirs  with  Christ.  The  one  is 
morality,  the  other  is  religion.  We  learn  morality 
from  Moses  and  the  prophets,  and  a  still  higher  and 
better  morality  from  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount. 
But  we  obtain  the  power  to  do  what  the  most  ideal 
law  could  not  make  us  do  because  of  the  weakness 
of  our  flesh.  We  obtain  new  power  through  contact 
with  the  living  Word  who-  spake  by  the  prophets 
and  was  incarnate  in  Jesus.  No  doctrine  of  sacred 
Scripture  deserves  to  be  called  Christian  which  does 
not  go  beyond  the  neo-legalism  of  “Matthew”  and 
include  also  the  evangelic  principle,  the  glad  tidings 
of  Paul  and  “John”  concerning  the  gift  of  life. 

The  Church  has  not  yet  fully  formulated  its 
Christian  doctrine  of  sacred  Scripture  because  the 
issue  has  not  as  yet  been  squarely  joined.  Great 
principles  of  the  faith  lie  latent  until  their  time  is 
fully  come.  But  there  are  indications  that  in  our 
day  that  time  has  come.  The  methods  and  prin¬ 
ciples  of  grammatico-historical  interpretation  were 
imposed  upon  the  Church  by  sheer  necessity.  With¬ 
out  these  Scripture  was  rapidly  becoming  the  mere 
tool  of  boundless  subjectivity.  Every  man  made  it 
the  servant  of  his  own  delusions.  The  next  step, 
logically  inevitable,  was  criticism,  both  textual  and 
higher.  When  manuscripts  disagreed,  was  the  in- 


110  HE  OPENED  TO  US  THE  SCRIPTURES 


dividual  reader  to  make  choice  according  to  his  own 
predilections?  Or  should  there  be  developed  an  im¬ 
partial  science  to  determine  by  approved  methods  of 
universal  application  which  of  two  or  more  variant 
readings  had  the  better  claim  to  represent  the  lost 
original?  Such  is  the  patient,  laborious,  devoted, 
self-denying  science  of  textual  criticism.  It  has 
reached  a  degree  of  perfection  in  methods  and  results 
for  the  field  of  the  New  Testament  incomparably 
beyond  all  other  fields,  simply  because  men  could 
be  found  willing  to  devote  their  lives  to  the  deter¬ 
mination  of  this  text  in  its  purity  in  the  proportion 
of  a  hundred  to  one  as  compared  to  any  other 
ancient  text. 

In  origin  and  methods  the  science  of  the  higher 
criticism  is  closely  akin  to  the  lower.  The  Bible 
has  two  accounts  of  the  creation  of  man,  two  ac¬ 
counts  of  the  sacred  history  of  Israel,  four  accounts 
of  the  gospel  story.  Which  shall  we  call  authori¬ 
tative?  It  has  reflections  of  the  religious  life  and 
the  redemptive  ideal  in  three  languages,  from  vari¬ 
ous  environments,  over  a  period  of  more  than  a 
thousand  years  of  religious  and  moral  development. 
As  between  pre-exilic  and  post-exilic  accounts  of  the 
history  of  Israel,  which  is  to  be  chosen?  As  be¬ 
tween  prophetic  and  priestly  conceptions  of  religious 
ideals  and  obligations,  as  between  ancient  and  mod¬ 
ern,  as  between  Hebrew  and  Hellenistic,  which?  As 
between  the  Palestinian  tradition  of  Jesus’  life  and 
teaching  and  the  Pauline  (most  ripely  enunciated 
in  the  fourth  Gospel),  which?  We  have  the  es- 


THE  WITNESS  OF  THE  SPIRIT 


111 


chatology  of  the  apocalyptic  chapters  of  the  Synop¬ 
tic  Gospels  coupled  with  their  fuller  elaboration  in 
the  Revelation  of  John.  We  have  also  the  escha¬ 
tology  of  Paul  and  the  fourth  evangelist,  whose 
conception  of  the  future  has  completely  dropped 
connection  with  Jewish  expectations  of  a  glorified 
Jerusalem  dominant  over  the  nations,  and  thinks 
only  of  a  manifestation  “not  unto  the  world,”  an 
eternal  life  in  the  fellowship  of  Christ  and  the 
Father.  As  between  these  two,  which?  Are  all 
these  ideas  and  teachings  identical,  or  should  we 
discriminate?  And  if  we  discriminate,  as  did  the 
prophets  and  Jesus  and  Paul,  should  it  be  at  ran¬ 
dom,  and  according  to  individual  predilection?  Or 
shall  we  take  these  great  teachers  at  their  word,  act 
upon  their  example,  make  Scripture  no  longer  a 
matter  of  “private  interpretation,”  but  a  record  of 
the  movement  of  the  divine  Spirit  of  revelation  and 
redemption,  down  across  the  ages,  out  from  center 
to  circumference?  For  one  who  reverences  the 
Bible  as  the  work  not  of  men  but  of  the  Spirit  of 
God,  a  reflection  of  that  growing  light  which  has 
ever  been  the  life  of  men,  there  is  no  alternative 
but  to  use  the  best  methods  of  historical  research, 
those  which  the  world  of  scholarship  approves  as  of 
universal  application,  to  study  the  history  of  re¬ 
demptive  ideas  in  interaction  with  the  changing  en¬ 
vironment.  The  discipline  has  taken  the  name  of 
the  higher  criticism,  a  scientific  method  for  the 
fuller  appreciation  of  the  movement  of  religious  and 
moral  development  in  its  central  line  of  progress, 


112  HE  OPENED  TO  US  THE  SCRIPTURES 


as  manifested  in  the  canonical  writings.  If  one 
choose  to  employ  theological  terms,  it  is  the  study 
of  the  work  of  the  revealing  and  redemptive  Spirit 
of  God. 

It  was  not  to  be  expected  that  historico-eritical 
methods  of  Bible  study,  were  they  never  so  inevi¬ 
table,  could  go  on  for  two  centuries  without  pro¬ 
voking  reaction  in  the  Church.  The  idea  of  an 
infallible,  miraculous,  verbally  inspired  standard  of 
faith  and  practice  is  too  ancient,  too  useful  to  those 
that  “sit  in  Moses’  seat,”  too  labor-saving  to  those 
for  whom  questions  of  reason  and  conscience  involve 
labor  of  the  most  painful  and  distasteful  kind,  to 
tolerate  an  advance  along  such  lines.  Moreover, 
science  is  a  mere  instrument  applicable  to  purposes 
of  good  or  evil  according  to  the  disposition  of  those 
who  apply  it.  Chemistry  may  multiply  the  yield 
of  our  fields  and  reenforce  our  industry,  or  it  may 
sweep  the  teeming,  populous  earth  with  the  besom 
of  devastation,  according  as  its  forces  are  turned. 

Likewise,  it  is  possible  to  turn  the  forces  of  his- 

\ 

torical  criticism  against  an  outworn  theory  of  sacred 
Scripture,  and,  by  riddling  its  obsolete  defenses, 
alienate  from  the  real  sources  of  religious  life  an 
easily  persuaded  multitude.  It  is  possible  thus 
cheaply  to  purchase  a  reputation  for  keenness  and 
erudition.  Criticism  has  been  so  used,  as  quacks  lay 
hold  of  the  discoveries  of  medical  science.  But  the 
remedy  for  quackery  is  not  the  abolition  of  medicine. 
The  remedy  for  destructive  criticism  is  criticism 
that  is  constructive.  Nor  is  the  discrimination  of 


THE  WITNESS  OF  THE  SPIRIT 


113 


the  false  prophet  from  the  true  teacher  of  the  eter¬ 
nal  Word  a  novel  requirement.  Scripture  itself 
imposes  the  duty  on  the  reason  and  conscience  of 
the  individual,  and  trusts  its  case  to  the  unsophis¬ 
ticated,  the  “children  of  Wisdom,”  after  any  impar¬ 
tial  hearing. 

Conflict  of  views  there  must  needs  be.  Followers 
of  Jesus  and  of  Paul  are  expected  to  be,  as  to  malice, 
babes  indeed,  but,  as  to  the  understanding,  full- 
grown  men;  and  humanity  knows  no  other  school 
for  such  than  the  conflict  of  opinion.  Three  cen¬ 
turies  ago  the  post-Reformation  dogmatists  at¬ 
tempted  to  set  up  an  infallible  rule  of  faith  and 
practice  offsetting  that  of  the  papacy.  For  this 
purpose  they  reverted  to  the  theory  of  the  Syna¬ 
gogue  of  an  infallible  Torah,  whereof  the  very 
vowel-points  were  dictated  from  heaven.  Since 
then,  the  increasing  pressure  of  an  inward  incon¬ 
sistency  has  been  felt  throughout  every  part  of  the 
Christian  Church  where  private  judgment  had  not 
been  stifled  by  authority.  Pre-Christian  concep¬ 
tions  of  revelation  and  inspiration  were  found  too 
narrow.  A  Christian  sense  of  what  the  Scriptures 
convey  demands  a  larger,  more  Christian  definition. 
Critical  studies  have  forced  this  issue  to  the  front. 
Others  which  agitated  once  the  multitude  of  sects 
born  of  the  attempt  to  secure  uniformity  by  appeal 
to  a  written  standard  which  itself  was  not  uniform 
have  sunk  into  relative  insignificance.  To-day  the 
question  of  the  use  of  Scripture  is  supreme,  and  the 
fact  is  beginning  to  be  recognized.  It  is  a  “funda- 


114  HE  OPENED  TO  US  THE  SCRIPTURES 


mental/’  whether  we  look  upon  divine  revelation 
as  static  or  dynamic.  It  is  a  question  of  a  living  or 
a  dying  Church  whether  it  shall  lay  hold  upon  letter 
or  spirit,  whether  it  shall  bind  itself  to  the  dead  past 
or  to  the  living  present  and  the  expanding  future. 
It  is  “fundamental”  whether  we  have  a  Christian 
or  an  un-Christian  doctrine  of  sacred  Scripture. 

And  to  have  a  Christian  doctrine,  it  is  not  enough 
to  endorse  the  tools  of  scientific  enquiry,  repressing 
and  rebuking  frivolous,  self-seeking,  or  irreverent 
application.  The  methods  of  criticism  were  devel¬ 
oped  by  reverent,  devoted,  self-denying  servants  of 
Christ,  and  bear  the  marks  of  suffering  for  his  sake. 
It  is  through  the  fire  of  misrepresentation  and  oppo¬ 
sition,  through  the  chill  of  laborious  days  and 
sleepless  nights,  that  they  have  been  tempered  to 
a  keenness  that  makes  them  the  model  for  the 
whole  world  of  scholarship.  It  ill  comports  with 
their  history  that  they  should  be  made  the  weapons 
of  cheap  iconoclasm.  Such,  however,  they  are  liable 
to  become,  unless  the  men  who  wield  them  are  ani¬ 
mated  by  the  Spirit  to  which  they  owe  their  origin. 
To  be  Christian  in  the  true  sense  of  the  word,  our 
doctrine  of  sacred  Scripture  must  embody  that 
principle  which  determines  the  use  made  of  it  by 
Jesus  and  Paul,  and  distinguishes  it  from  pagan  and 
Jewish.  We  have  found  it  set  forth  most  clearly 
by  the  ripest,  profoundest  thought  of  the  apostolic 
age,  the  “theologian”  evangelist.  Scripture,  accord¬ 
ing  to  the  fourth  evangelist,  is  the  record  of  the 
“witness”  of  God.  It  brings  men  into  vital  contact 


THE  WITNESS  OF  THE  SPIRIT 


115 


with  the  life,  “even  that  eternal  life  which  was  with 
the  Father  and  was  manifested”  in  the  person  and 
work  and  work  of  Christ.  This  contact  with  quick¬ 
ening,  divine  life  is  achieved,  however,  not  as  the 
scribes  imagine,  by  defining  rules  obedience  to  which 
obtains  reward  from  the  Lawgiver,  but  by  a 
kindling  of  the  fire  of  devotion  through  the  eternal 
flame  of  self-surrender  to  the  cause  of  God.  For 
this  devotion  to  the  redemptive  purpose  of  God  is 
a  river  of  fire  coming  down  through  the  ages,  out 
of  which,  to  borrow  the  symbolism  of  Hebrew  myth,1 
living  spirits  rise  up  to  sanctify  the  Name,  and 
when  their  work  is  done  sink  back  again.  Such  are 
God’s  ministers  that  are  made  “a  flame  of  fire.” 
Contact  with  the  spirit  of  Jesus  gives  life  eternal, 
because  it  stands  for  the  whole  fullness  of  this  re¬ 
vealing  and  redemptive  Spirit  of  the  Father.  In 
Moses  and  all  the  prophets,  still  more  in  the  records 
of  Jesus’  life  and  work,  men  can  come  into  contact 
with  this  eternal  life  of  God  and  be  enkindled  by  it. 

The  dialogue  in  which  our  fourth  evangelist  em¬ 
bodies  his  contrast  between  Jesus’  use  of  the  Scrip¬ 
ture  and  that  of  the  scribes  gives  not  a  rule,  but 
a  principle.  It  describes  not  a  method,  but  a  spirit. 
It  is  not  scientific,  but  religious.  Science,  method, 
rule,  must  be  developed  in  practical  application. 
The  Christian  principle  opens  the  way  for  such 
sciences  as  comparative  religion,  the  history  of  re¬ 
ligions,  the  psychology  of  religious  experience.  But 
in  itself  it  is  something  else,  at  once  less  and  greater. 

1  Based  upon  Dt.  33:2.  See  marginal  rendering. 


116  HE  OPENED  TO  US  THE  SCRIPTURES 


It  is  faith  in  God,  faith  in  man  also  as  (potentially 
at  least)  the  son  of  God,  and  faith  in  the  eternal 
revealing  and  redemptive  Spirit  of  Truth,  who  spake 
by  the  prophets,  and  was  incarnate  in  our  Lord  and 
Savior  Jesus  Christ. 

The  New  Testament  supplies  not  the  finished 
product  but  the  ferment  out  of  which  must  come 
the  next  great  secular  development  of  religion,  the 
advance  from  letter  to  spirit,  from  the  use  of  the 
records  and  documents  of  religious  experience  in  the 
past  as  if  conformity  to  their  standards  guaranteed 
eternal  life,  to  a  use  of  them  as  means  of  contact 
with  the  life  of  God  in  man.  One  great  stage  of 
this  advance  was  made  possible  by  the  work  of 
Paul;  another  by  PauPs  unknown  successor  at 
Ephesus.  But  He  to  whom  all  future  ages  must 
look  as  the  great  Pioneer  and  Captain  in  this  libera¬ 
tion  and  enlargement  of  our  spiritual  life  is  One  of 
whom  it  was  remembered  that  his  teaching,  while 
based  on  the  same  Scriptures  used  by  the  Scribes, 
was  of  another  tone  and  character.  Of  Him  his 
disciples  could  say,  as  they  recalled  the  lessons  He 
had  drawn  from  Law  and  Prophets  and  Psalms: 
“Did  not  our  hearts  burn  within  us  while  He  opened 
to  us  the  Scriptures?” 


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